WOMEN’S PRISON

Set aside the ritual hejabs and the jailings for “un-Islamic conduct” and it's not a long exercise-yard stroll from prison dramas like “The Big House,” “The Shawshank Redemption” and “Chopper” (25th CIFF 2001) to this hardboiled saga, spanning a generation of hard time in an overcrowded Iranian penitentiary for women offenders, whose iron gates constantly swing open to more inmates, outcasts and dissidents. Shortly after the Revolution, magisterial warden Tahareh arrives – chador-clad, college-educated, and sternly confident that she can bring discipline and deference to the cellblock “trash.” Her chief adversary is a prisoner named Mitra, still unremorseful for killing her “bug-eyed pervert” of a stepfather; now Mitra is a de facto leader, spokesperson and advocate for the often-unruly inmates. “I will break her,” Tahareh vows to herself. The ensuing war of nerves between the inflexible adversaries plays out over 17 years; through war, executions, births, deaths, escape attempts and unexpected reunions. Shot in an actual Tehran facility, WOMEN'S PRISON is one of the female-oriented movies heralding a new and startling era of frankness in Iranian cinema, and you can bet your last stash of contraband cigarettes it ran into censorship problems in its patriarchal home country. Filmmaker Manijeh Hekmat herself was threatened with arrest if she screened it for foreigners at the 2002 Fajr Film Fesival. A subsequent, expurgated version has set box-office records on native soil, though the 27th CIFF will be screening the uncut version. (In Farsi with English subtitles)