The Circle

A mother has just given birth to a perfect baby. Everyone was supposed to rejoice, but nobody does. Mother and child is undesired. The ultra sound had shown it to be a boy. The family is ready to celebrate a son.
Three young women have prison leave and decides to escape. One of the girls tries to buy a bus ticket. She has no ID and is traveling alone. The bus driver reluctantly sells her a ticket when she lies, claiming to be a student.
In prison, an unmarried woman is pregnant. She escapes, but is kicked out from home by her brothers when they discover her condition. She seeks out a friend working at a hospital, but is given no help.
Within a day, we meet a handful of women, all living on the edge of the "law". Their crimes are small, their guilt or innocence is without significance. They live in a world of constant surveillance, patriarchal bureaucracy and an injustice inherited through generations. But this oppressed society can not crush the strength and solidarity of the women's circle.

Jafar Panahi is one of the leading contemporary Iranian filmmakers, winning wide-ranging international recognition and numerious prizes from major festivals for his films The White Balloon (1995), The Circle (2000) and Offside (2006). His films combine neorealist esthetics with biting humour and social commentary, with notable focus on the situation of Iranian women. Despite being banned from filmmaking by Iranian authorities since 2010 and living under house arrest for periods of time, he has continued making and distributing films. His latest film Taxi (2015), shot under clandestine conditions in Teheran, won him the Golden Bear at the Berlinale film festival.