A woman forced to choose between two desired life choices is not a new premise for a film; only more recently in the contemporary world have women been told that they can, in fact, do both. Motherhood and a career, family and a successful business — society now often rightfully tells women they can do it all. However, Seven Days, which world-premiered in Toronto’s Centrepiece strand, examines a woman in a very precarious sociopolitical position such that she must once again choose, set against the political background of Iran. Mohammad Rasoulof (writer-director of The Seed of the Sacred Fig [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Mohammad Rasoulof
scheda film], Germany’s Oscar submission) pens a nuanced and tightly written script that is dramatised successfully, albeit very conventionally, by German-Iranian director Ali Samadi Ahadi. Half-thriller, half-family drama, the first portion roughly chronicles our protagonist’s escape to the Iranian border while the latter explores the activist’s relationship with her family and the personal battle she wrestles with inside.

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Maryam (Vishka Asayesh), a human rights and women’s rights activist living in Tehran, is granted seven days medical leave from prison, during which she plans her mountain escape via smugglers to the Iran-Turkey border. There, she intends to meet her husband Bahram (Majid Bakhtiari) and adolescent children Dena (Tanaz Malaei) and Alborz (Sam Vafa), who have all lived in Hamburg for the last six years. Over the course of this fateful week, she struggles with whether to flee to be with her family in Germany or stay in Iran to continue fighting for her country on the ground.

At its core, Seven Days is about womanhood, sandwiched between a mother’s love for her children and an activist’s fight for political freedoms, neither of which our hero takes up lightly. Nonetheless, it still keeps Iran’s political system in mind, touching on the true-to-life sacrifices that women human rights activists face (at the film’s end, Ahadi includes a quote from Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi, writing from the notorious Evin Prison). Rasoulof's script is remarkably feminist in its construction, even if such a premise can be found in every film about a woman choosing between her family and career or making a decision that prioritises her desires above all.

Seven Days confronts the idea that a woman has the right to choose what she believes is right for herself — as well as the innate gender biases that come with making a decision that does not socially conform. Although her friends urge her to leave as soon as possible, she deigns not leave her beloved country: “I am not sad — I am the world’s sorrow and a land is weeping in my chest,” Maryam recites. While it bears nationalist undertones in the idea that Iran is Maryam’s first love, characters also criticise the very concept of the nation-state (“A piece of land, encircled by a fictitious line called a border”).

With cinematography by Mathias Neumann, Ahadi's overly clean visuals and short conflict sequences overshadow the direness of our protagonist's plight. There is little cinematic risk-taking at play despite risks around Maryam’s every corner, and the film is particularly hindered by its pacing, which gives many sequences equal weight despite the emotional importance of some being greater than others. Despite the peril that she is very clearly in, tension seems to fall by the wayside, even if partly upheld by Asayesh's strong leading performance.

Seven Days is a German production by Brave New Work GmbH, and Goodfellas is managing international sales.