Girls in prison, Iranian-style, in Mehrdad Oskouei's surprising STARLESS DREAMS

It begins with the usual, as the perp is fingerprinted and then those "felon" photos are quickly taken, as we follow that prisoner through the process. Except that here, the felon is a girl in her late-teen years, and the location is Iran. Uh-oh. But wait. After viewing STARLESS DREAMS, the new documentary from Iranian filmmaker Mehrdad Oskouei, rather than experiencing the usual "isn't-prison-awful!" sense you get from so many incarceration movies, you are more likely to feel that this may be the safest, kindest place for these girls in all of Iran.

Mr. Oskouei, shown at right, was evidently given extraordinary access to the prison and its inmates, and he was also able to gain the trust of both the girls and their guards in a rather extraordinary way. Consequently, his documentary is full of what certainly seems like "real life," as the girls chatter and laugh and play games and enjoy what seems -- against their experience in the outside world, either at home with their families or as runaways -- a comparatively idyllic existence.

We meet this gaggle of girls piecemeal and learn only haltingly about each one and her previous-to-prison life. It is not even clear exactly why some of these girls are here -- perhaps for simply running away or being on the outs with their blood family. In other cases we do learn why (patricide is one reason), and yet the details for even this render the murderer at the very least a kind of self-defense victim.

The documentary is often gorgeously filmed: sharp, clear, colorful and with an eye for both detail and beauty (where the latter can be found, at least). Oskouei also offers some lovely compositions and framing.

What makes the film so special, however, is the friendship the girls clearly feel for each other (they share such similar dreadful family backgrounds) and the liveliness and high spirits they so often exhibit.  Which point up even more strongly that the place of Iranian women, in both society and the family, is simply awful.

"Why are you crying, 651?" asks the filmmaker at one point. "Because her story is the same as my story," the girl answers, adding that she is called 651 because, "that is the number of grams they found on me." "How will your family welcome you home? another girl is asked. "With chains and a beating," she answers.

Many of the girls (perhaps most) want to stay in prison. Once you've heard their "family" stories, you'll understand why. They put on a sort of puppet show (below) during which they can hide behind those puppets/masks and say what they think. Yet, they do not seem at all shy about saying this even to a cleric who comes to visit, to whom they deliver some hard questions about god and justice. What we hear of his answers does not in the least suffice.

The movie cannot help but be ultra-feminist against the all-encompassing patriarchy that is Islam and Iran. As to her future, one young woman predicts that she will die in the gutter one day. "Don't you want to fight for a better life," the filmmaker asks? "Society is stronger than I am," she answers him.

One girl, at last reunited with her family (one of the few that seems even halfway bearable), tells us, "I'm just so happy: It feels strange." What happens to the couple of girls who actually go back to their families? We never learn the outcome of this or about what happens to any of the other girls. And the fact that the filmmaker was given such access to the prison does make me wonder if perhaps he was not expected to portray that prison in a good light.

Still, what he has given us in this portrait of Iran's younger generation of females is, while deeply disturbing, also something to cherish. From The Cinema Guild and running a brisk 76 minutes, the documentary opens this Friday, January 20, at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, New York. On Jan. 26 & 28: it will play the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; on February 10 it opens at the University of Wisconsin Cinematheque in Madison, and on April 14 at the Colorado State University/ACT Human Rights Film Festival in Fort Collins, Colorado. 

Argo--for real--in Drew Taylor/Larry Weinstein's smashing documentary, OUR MAN IN TEHRAN

For any of you who were impressed with the Oscar-winning Argo a couple of years back (or even for those, like me, who thought that film was overdone and way over-rated), here comes a new documentary that will shed a lot of light on the story of some of those American hostages held captive by Iran some 35 years ago. Coincidentally 35 minutes shorter than its overblown narrative counterpart but packed to the gills with smart history, plenty of background, and many of the same people who were involved at the time, OUR MAN IN TEHRAN, directed by Drew Taylor and Larry Weinstein and written by Taylor and Robert Wright, is actually a kind of homage to Ken Taylor (shown on poster, above, two photos below as he looks today, and at bottom, back in the day), Canada's former ambassador to Iran, and the man most responsible for the safety and rescue of a handful of the hostages.

Perhaps the most important thing that filmmakers Taylor and Weinstein (shown above, right and left, respectively) accomplish is to give viewers a much-needed look at the kind of state Iran was prior to the abdication of the infamous Shaw and the coming to power of Khomeini. Taylor and Weinstein show us what kind of police state, complete with heavy-duty imprisonment, torture and murder the Shaw ran in order to suppress any dissenting voices. (They don't, unfortunately, tells us of the American- and British-led coup that overthrew the democratically-elected regime of Mohammad Mosaddegh and placed the Shaw back in power.)

Still, what's here gives us plenty of understanding as to why Iran desperately wanted and needed regime change toward a more just and equal society. What they actually got was something else, and that has been the story of Iran in the three decades since. The talking heads, many of them from Canada, assembled by the filmmakers, give us a smart, crisp and pungent look at Iranian society taken over by the "elite" and wealthy class. "There were bars (serving alcohol) in a country in which people didn't drink!" Notes another: "People are always happy to ban pleasures that they themselves cannot afford."

We even hear from the Shaw himself, as he explains, "There are many more things which united us with our American friends than divide us." Hello, oil! (Not to mention torture, imprisonment and death.)  There is real history here, from people who are as close to the term "experts" as you might want. And then we learn that no less than President Carter himself did not want to allow the Shaw, now diagnosed with cancer, to be allowed into the United States for treatment. This was most likely the single thing that sent Khomeini and the fundamentalists over the brink and led to the hostage-taking (above and below), yet all of Carter's advisers insisted on allowing this.

Later, and as soon as Ronald Reagan took the Presidential reins, Khomeini (in the photo, below) offered a further slap in the face to Carter by releasing the remaining hostages. (There has long been speculation that Reagan was doing behind-the-scenes dealings for their release even before he took over.)  In Canada, we see a sneering Trudeau, who, out of courtesy and respect, had been told about the hostage situation, and still played dirty politics with it. What a little media-crazy slut he was!

When we get to the actual plans for the hostages' exfiltration -- the Argo/Hollywood connection -- despite what we already know, the filmmakers manage to pack some suspense, a lot of humor and even a little surprise into the mix. Most of all, they give us something a hell of a lot closer to the truth of the situation than Argo offered, with its fake, last-minute, will-they-make-it? nonsense.

As we're smartly reminded at the documentary's close, "President Carter put the hostage's well-being above his own, and that's not typical of the actions of most senior politicians. You have to give him credit for that." Indeed. Can you even remotely imagine President Obama doing anything such thing -- not to mention that war-mongering idiot George W. Bush -- or any of the current would-be Republican candidates?

From First Run Features, the film opens today, Friday, May 15, in New York City at the Cinema Village, and then hits Wilmette, Salt Lake City, Seattle and Cleveland in the weeks and months to come.

To see all currently scheduled playdates, with cities and theaters shown, click here.