UNDER THE SKIN OF THE CITY

Rakhshan Bani Etemad is one of Iran's most prominent women directors, and in UNDER THE SKIN OF THE CITY she delivers a hard-hitting and frank look at a working-class matriarch in modern Tehran. Tuba is the heroine's name, and she works to support a bedridden husband. Her assembly-line job has taken its toll on her health, but she does her best to hold a family together in uncertain times, represented by the tremulous hope in the air during a general parliamentary election. But it's Tuba's future going to the polls as she contends with the physical abuse of her grown daughter by the girl's husband. Moreover, her eldest son Abbas, seeing no tomorrow in his routine with a clothing manufacturer, begins a dangerous dalliance with drug-dealing that he hopes will punch his ticket to an exit from the country and a better life overseas. The younger boy, meanwhile, places his hopes in the more socially acceptable opiate of party politics. Ultimately, both the direction of the country and the safety of Tuba's household hang in the balance, one a captive of the winds of change, the other hostage to a son's seething ambitions and divided loyalties. (In Farsi with English subtitles)