CheerupSilver Very Cool!!!

Sameer Callahan It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Arianna Moses Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Paynbob It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

Pierre Radulescu Dayereh (The Circle), made in 2000 by Jafar Panahi takes the hellish universe from his other movies to the extreme. A bunch of women is followed by the camera during one given day. They were out of prison in the morning, they are trying to do anything in their power to not come back there, they are again in jail at evening. It is not explained how did they come out of prison in the morning; it doesn't matter. The movie doesn't show what they are doing all day long; it doesn't matter. The camera just leaves one to follow the other, and so on: glimpses of life.It is not told why they were imprisoned for the first time: it doesn't matter. A woman can be arrested there seemingly for anything: traveling without being escorted by a male relative, or traveling without documents, or smoking in public, or not having the chador properly arranged, or responding improperly when harassed by men, or traveling escorted by the wrong man, or simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Any place can be the wrong place, anytime. A woman just gave birth to a daughter, and the in-laws were expecting a boy: the wrong place at the wrong time. The husband could throw her out on the street with the baby, her brothers could not let the woman come back in the home of her parents.There is no main character in the movie: just a bunch of women followed randomly by a hand-held camera. Women on the run. A perfectly circular universe without possibility of escape. A perfectly crazy universe without fissure. A genially built dystopia. Think at Kafka, think at Orwell.Is this the real situation of women in that country? Well, it's like asking whether an oppressive regime is really that oppressive. Of course, it is not like that for all women; it is not like that for many women, but that's not the point. Bottom line, it's about women at the mercy of a society whose laws, institutions and traditions are male centered. Most women know the rules of the game, but for any of them there is potentially a wrong place at the wrong time. Is it such a situation only in one country? Only in one totalitarian ideology, whether religious or secular? I would let the response to you.

Exiled_Archangel I'm not that much familiar with Iranian cinema, yet as most people around, I already knew women had serious social problems in the contemporary Iranian society. When I was living in Turkey, we had an Iranian lady staying with our neighbors, a refugee who fled the '79 disaster and was trying to find serenity and freedom in Turkey.Beginning there, it's very easy to figure this film is not even exaggerated. It's deadly obvious that the actors are amateur, but then again, this proves us mediocre acting doesn't necessarily make a movie bad. Dayereh has considerable might in its ways of depicting the problems women could face in Iran, and the picture selection is exceptional. But all in all, it could have been significantly better with better actors.I wonder how the Iranian government allowed this motion picture to be shot without giving any trouble to the director, and especially to the women. Hopefully this is a sign indicating things are getting better in Iran!This movie could have been stronger with better actors, but it's still well worth your 90 minutes. I'm already looking forward to seeing other films of Mr Panahi. 7.5/10

Lubin Odana A bleak movie that reminded me of Kafka. As a westerner this was a real culture shock, I had no idea why these three women at the beginning were so scared of the police - I couldn't work out what was going on, or even what the buildings were supposed to be.Gradually things start to make sense - it's hard not to watch this film without getting angry at the numerous ways that women are kept down in the society, often at the expense of men - for example, the "John" is let go, while the prostitute goes to prison, the women are continually subjected to harrassment from anonymous men in the streets, they are trapped by pregnancy and its consequences.I liked how cigarettes were used throughout the film - you don't often see Iranian women smoking - and while nearly all of the leads seemed to smoke, it wasn't until right at the end that one of them was actually allowed to smoke - a powerful image.The final part in the prison cell where everything falls into place is a moment right up there with the film La Kabina (The Telephone Box). Recommended.

nunculus In Jafar Panahi's claustral feature debut, the brilliant central conceit is that being a woman in Iran is exactly equivalent to being the Wrong Man in an Alfred Hitchcock movie. In the movie's nameless Iranian city, the narrative baton is handed off from one woman to another, each of them missing an ID card, a chaperoning male, some form of social validation; without it, the long arm of the law winds around each woman like a python. Panahi's style--long, fluid takes that are at once bruisingly verite and dreamlike--buckles in the script's ingenious (and perhaps unconscious) major device: in this movie, women are a secret underworld with nodding, unspoken signals, just like hoodlums silently acknowledging one another in a gangster picture. There is no warm-hug sisterhood here, just the desperate mutual regard of the about-to-be-caught.The honesty and unfussiness of the style of contemporary Iranian directors enables them to get away with stuff other artists might not, such as the ending of this movie, which, in a European or American movie, might seem thuddingly unsubtle. Here, it seems like the fulfillment of a nightmare--and it works because of Panahi's wittily blunt style, which is pitched somewhere between Iranian neorealism and Elaine May's MIKEY AND NICKY. And it works because of our constant recognition of the literal, physical courage of the movie: our glimpses of current state attitudes toward abortion, prostitution and corrupt police are so bald one marvels at Panahi's (and the cast and crew's) effrontery. Never has chador seemed less exotic and more evil--a manifestation of a terror of the beauty and pleasure of the female body that seems to engulf each character like a Cronenbergian plague. (The movie's wittiest touch is Cronenbergian, too: a woman character has a tic that gives her away to the cops--pregnancy-induced vomiting.)