It makes sense that if Kiarostami were to create a chamber piece, the "chamber" would be the front seat of a car. It is here, on the crowded streets of Tehran, that a middle-class woman (we never know her name) does her best thinking, engages loved ones on issues of family life, and strangers on religion and the oppression of women. And it was here, we suspect, that she came to the decision to divorce and remarry. That bold move is the center of her relationship with her troubled young son Amin, who lives to challenge his mother's right to live. Naturally possessive, he treads on territory that has been stolen from children by men; he sounds exactly like his father, and that is a minefield. These ten front-seat encounters recorded with a digital video camera on the dashboard offer the radical intimacy and feminism of Chantal Akerman, the searing camera-as-emotional-X-ray of John Cassavetes.

—Judy Bloch

• Written, Photographed by Kiarostami. With Mania Akbari, Amin Maher. (93 mins, In Farsi with English subtitles, Color, 35mm, From Zeitgeist)

Followed by:
Roads of Kiarostami. (Abbas Kiarostami, Iran, 2005). Kiarostami muses on his landscape photography. (32 mins, In Farsi with English subtitles, DVCam, Courtesy of the Iranian Art Foundation)

• (Total running time: 125 mins)