3 FACES (SE ROKH) World Cinema

Eight years and four films into a 20-year government-imposed filmmaking ban, Jafar Panahi continues to expand on themes of artistic repression with his latest and most expressly feminist film in over a decade. 3 FACES is at once a gentle prodding at the absurdity of certain cultural traditions and a more somber indictment of their use as an assault on creative expression. Both fictionalized versions of themselves, Panahi and well-known Iranian actress Behnaz Jafari travel to a small village in northwest Iran to investigate the possible suicide of an aspiring young actress. Content to sit in the car while three generations of women contend with their dual oppression as women and actresses, Panahi traverses moral and ideological pathways through rural Iran with trademark heart, charm and intelligence. – Malin Kan