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Please note: registration does not guarantee entry if the event reach capacity. Admission is granted on a first-come, first-served basis.
Patrons who have registered will need to obtain their free tickets at the box office, where seating will be assigned. Any seats remaining 15 minutes before showtime will be released to standby patrons.
Writer-director Dariush Mehrjui studied cinema and philosophy at UCLA before returning to Iran in the late 1960s where his second feature The Cow is credited with launching the Iranian New Wave. A giant of Iran cinema for over five decades until his untimely, tragic death in 2023, Mehrjui was a fierce critic of the Iranian regime and fought government censorship throughout his career. In his films, he explored the psychological toll of fear, ignorance and oppression on the lives of individuals with grace, insight and poetry. The Archive is honored to present a two-evening tribute (June 28 and 29) to his life and legacy featuring some of his greatest works.
Leila
Iran, 1997
Soon after meeting at a joyful gathering of family and friends, Leila (Leila Hatami) and Reza (Ali Mosaffa) are happily married. When Leila learns she can’t have children, however, that supportive network of relations becomes an unrelenting force of social pressure that threatens to drive them apart, most forcefully articulated by Reza’s domineering mother who insists Leila allow Reza to take a second wife. Hatami delivers a devastating performance in Dariush Mehrjui’s unforgettable portrait of a woman under emotional siege that film critic Amy Taubin called “the most brilliant depiction of a marriage gone to hell that I’ve ever seen.”
DCP, color, in Persian with English subtitles, 102 min. Director: Dariush Mehrjui. Screenwriters: Mahnaz Ansarian, Dariush Mehrjui. With: Leila Hatami, Ali Mosaffa, Jamileh Sheikhi.
