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Zir-e poost-e shahr (2000)
Directed by: Rakhshan Bani Etemad
Date of birth: 3 April 1954, Tehran, Iran
Writing credits: Rakhshan Bani Etemad , Farid Mostafavi
Country: Iran
Language: Farsi
Color: Color
Runtime: 92 minutws
Released: 2000
Genre: Drama

Tuba, a hardworking house wife has to take care of her ill husband and her three chiildren. Abbad , her elder son desires to go to Japan. Without consulting with his family, Abbas sells the family house. The buyer is a crook and does not provide the money. Now, Abbas is driven to engage in smuggling against his will.

The parliamentary election campaign is in full swing in Iran. There is an atmosphere of great expectation and anxiety. Like many other Iranians, Tuba and her family, modest and hard working, are trying to negotiate between the present hardship and their hopes for the future. Hope and also despair. Her husband is handicapped and bedridden and Tuba has a permanent cough from assembly line work in a factory, but she does her best to hold her family together. Her eldest son Abbas, however, is not resigned to their condition. He works for a clothing manufacturer and has dreams of getting married to a girl in an office, but he wants to get a good job in Japan, make a fortune and change the lot of his family -- a common dream among working-class Iranian youth. In order to obtain his visa and air ticket, however, he places his mother's modest house at risk. But as a devoted mother, Tuba is not ready to abandon her son even in such dire circumstances. After the gentle feminist parenthesis of THE MAY LADY, Rakhshan Bani-Etemad returns to the eye-opening, hard-hitting drama of her early films like NARGESS, blending realistic lower-class settings and characters with a dramatically constructed story.
Deborah Young (Variety)

Tuba works in a factory, lives a modest but serene life and does everything possible to support his family. Abbas, his eldest son, doesn't believe in a better future and is obsessed by the idea of going to work in Japan. In order to pay for the visa and the air fare he pawns his mother's house, the only thing of value the family owns. Tuba, although he is quite worried, stands by his son and does his best to help him.

"Right in the midst of the political elections in Iran, there was an atmosphere of anxiety and great expectations. Many working class families of modest means tried to find a balance between the difficulties of daily life and their hopes for the future" (Rakhshan Bani Etemad).

Rakhshan Bani Etemad

Credits:

Directed by: Rakhshan Bani Etemad
Writing credits: Rakhshan Bani Etemad, Farid Mostafavi
Photography: Hossein Jafarian
Scenography: Omid Mohit
Montague: Mostafa Kherghepoush
Sound: Asghar Shahverdi

Cast:

Golab Adineh (Tuba)
Mohammad Reza Foroutan (Abbas)
Baran Kosari
Ebrahim Shaybani
Mohsen Ghazi Moradi
Homeyra Riazi

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