Rakhshan Banietemad, one of Iran's greatest living filmmakers, has spent the last few decades in a kind of inner exile: as she did not want to make common cause with the ruling government, she only made documentaries. Her comeback feature film, one of the few true masterpieces of 2014, was also made bypassing the rules of the film authorities by a hair's breadth: not as a feature-length film, but as a series of short films - for which she did not need a filming permit.
In the vignettes that make up Tales (Ghesseha), we see an Iran that we know exists, but which is rarely reflected in the cinema: unemployed men, imprisoned dissidents, drug-addicted women, striking workers, banned war veterans and so on. If you are familiar with Banietemad's work, you will recognize some of the characters from earlier films - although none of them are better off today than they were back then. But then there is also the love that is able to prevail even under the most adverse circumstances, and the patience and grace and reason and the hope that things will change again one day, if only you don't give up courage and carry on.
