The Day I Became a Woman

Just as it appeared to be illegal to make a film in France back at the turn of the millennium without casting Gerard Depardieu or Daniel Auteil, so you could be forgiven for thinking that Iran’s burgeoning industry boiled down to the efforts of one individual. When he’s not directing or breeding a film-making dynasty (his daughter Samira famously made her directorial debut, The Apple, at the age of just 17), Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s name can be found somewhere on the credits of virtually every film that came out of Iran during that great flourishing. He’s credited only as the scriptwriter and producer of The Day I Became a Woman, but the film boasts all the striking visual flourishes and deceptively straightforward storytelling we’ve come to expect from the Makhmalbaf brand. Which is hardly surprising as director Marziyeh Meshkini happens to be his wife.

A triptych of fables focusing on women of different ages in modern-day Iran, The Day I Became a Woman balances its overt feminist message with an empathic approach to its subjects. The three loosely inter-linked short stories are heartbreaking, disturbing and oddly uplifting respectively. In the first, Hava (Fatemah Cherag Akhar) wakes as usual and goes to play with her friend Hassan (Hassan Nebhan) on the beach. But she’s intercepted by her grandmother, who tells her that as this is her ninth birthday she is now officially a woman, can no longer play with boys, and must wear the all-enveloping chador to protect herself from the male gaze – or face God’s vengeful wrath. After appealing to her mother, who reveals that she was actually born at noon, Hava is granted one more hour of freedom and given a stick to use as a primitive sundial as those precious minutes tick away.

The second story opens with a lone horseman bearing down on the striking image of a bunch of chador-clad women pedalling furiously as they race their bicycles along a straight desert road. The husband of one of their number, Ahoo (Shabnam Toloui), he instructs her to get off “the devil’s mount” immediately or face summary divorce. She barely acknowledges him, so he races off to collect a mullah to perform the divorce as she pedals. The situation soon spirals out of control and the story ends ambiguously. Finally, an old peasant woman named Hoora is wheeled around a smart new shopping centre, acquiring vast amounts of consumer electrical goods and furniture. “All the things I have never had, I will buy for myself now,” she declares. Only in their dotage, Meshkini seems to be telling us, are Iranian women permitted a modicum of independence.

This screening launches the Bristol Feminist Film Club. Tickets cost £5.50 + 50p booking fee from Bristol Ticket Shop, with all proceeds going to the Iranian and Kurdish Civil Rights Organisation. You can find the Bristol Feminist Film Club on Instagram (bristolfeministfilmclub) or contact them at bristolfeminsitfilmclub@gmail.com