The Iranian cinematic flowering blooms on. As with Soviet films, directors continue to plead innocence as they produce one film after another that are, yes, poignant examinations of ordinary life, but also seem to everyone but the censors subtle criticisms of the regime under which they are somehow still made. Even if the Islamic Fundamentalist era were to someday pass and Iranian society were to become liberalized according to Western definitions of that term, people will still look back on this as a Golden Age of a national cinema, as they do with French New Wave and Italian Neo-Realism, a moment in the cinematic sun.

One of the big names in this film renaissance is director Majid Majidi, whose previous two films have enjoyed the highest visibility of Iranian movies in North American distribution. If you haven't seen the marvelous Children of Heaven, or the gorgeous Color of Paradise, head on down to your local Blockbuster, where sometime next year you'll also be able to rent Majidi's newest portrait of ordinary Iranian life, Baran.

Of course, "ordinary" is a matter of style and approach, for the setting of Baran involves the ongoing disruption of ordinary Iranian life by the presence of a million and a half Afghan refugees -- which makes this film relevant to American viewers in ways unforseen when the film was booked for the festival.

Victims of their own nation's never ending wars, the Afghans in this film aren't merely pawns of a politicized story, but rather ordinary people themselves, trying to feed their families, or raising money to either send back home or go home themselves. The setting is a high-rise construction site, where illegal Afghan workers scatter whenever building inspectors show up to warn the owner of the consequences for hiring illegal workers.

One worker, Lateef, is -- to use an American designation for a universal position -- the low man on the totem pole. His job is hauling cement, and making hot tea to bring to his fellow workers (a delightfully civilized Iranian custom we could learn from). Lateef is an obnoxious trickster, also a universal type, who thinks both that the world owes him a living, and that the world is out to get him. Such an attitude costs him his job, which he loses to a young Afghani worker who seems at first even more useless. But industrious young Rahmat proves a worth that transforms the task of perfunctorily dispensing "dishwater" tea into an art form, bringing hominess and humanity to the rough surroundings -- and, ultimately and especially, to Lateef.

Majidi continues to direct with solid Fordian competence, but without the mythic sensibilities: his framing, scene building, and storytelling are dependable and true -- though his filmmaking style is not quite as plainspoken as the stories. Indeed, cinematograpaher Mohammed Davudu once again lights and composes with a matching confidence, one beautiful image after another.

Ultimately, a core of humanity and common decency is the trademark of Majidi's work. The message here would seem to be: if you treat people as decent human beings, they will become decent human beings. And while the film is more realistic than mythic, the underlying thrust seems at some level allegorical: subtle messages that may one day prove revolutionary indeed in Iran.

One big difference between recent Iranian films and cinema back in the U.S.S.R. is we never got exported Soviet documentaries as open and revealing as Divorce, Iranian Style, where the camera was set up like a fly on the wall in an Iranian divorce court.

That film's award-winning directors are back with Runaway, where the camera is set up in a women's shelter in Tehran.

As in the earlier film, viewers are given an astonishing and intimate look at family problem-solving under an Islamic regime. Instead of a male judge, the professional functionary here is a female counselor. And unlike the stereotype of an Islamic woman, this counselor is educated, sensible and clearly in charge. The film revolves around her intake desk, where she meets girls and discusses with them the problems that brought them to the shelter, which she then tries to help solve and send them home.

The problems seem no different than what you'd hear about if the camera had been set up at the Department of Human Services in my Chicago neighborhood: the usual family dysfunctions and conflicts, over grades, boundaries, stories of physical and sexual abuse, drugs, communication breakdown, divorce.

In addition to scenes in the counselor's office, the documentary follows several girls through the entire process of coming in, working through their problems, and moving on to -- hopefully -- a better situation, either back home or out on their own. The relationships that develop among the girls are sweet and powerful, as they learn to support one another through hard times.

I found it nearly impossible to watch the earlier documentary at the divorce court without being constantly distracted by my indignation at a patriarchical system that so patently, absurdly -- to my non-Islamic frame of reference -- denies women basic civil rights, even an official voice in determining their own fate. (And what made Divorce, Iranian Style a delight was the ways women made their voices heard in unofficial ways.)

In Runaway, however, we see women in charge for much of the film, and one can sometimes forget about the system under which they live and get caught up in the universality of their problems and problem-solving. One almost gets a sense that sensible, educated women actually run the country.

Sadly, this is far from the case.

For the men do make their appearance felt: first, by showing up, to collect daughters and sisters and try to talk them into coming home. This is where the sense of indignation rises in this film. For none of the men seem to have any interest in taking seriously the problems that brought the girls to the shelter. Over and over again, one hears from the male family heads concern that the girls, in their one or two nights on the street between home and shelter, lost their virginity: the concern is that they are still "intact". And, most infuriatingly, the concern has nothing to do with the girls themselves, and everything to do with family "honor".

We also hear discussion of the Police Unit for Combatting Social Corruption. Of arranged marriages between grown men and twelve year olds. We see a girl who has fled a step-father she accuses of trying to rape her talked into admitting it was her fault. We see another girl, who had been catcalled in the street, blamed for that incident because, her family insists, she walked "improperly". "All men are wolves," it is noted by men, more than once: and it's easy to agree with them. It's also easy to see how this attitude leads from moderate Fundamentalist Islam to a Taliban with its head-to-toe garments to protect men from their lust. The real crime is that the wrong people are punished.

Despite the reminder of the oppressiveness of the regime, there is so much in Runaway that gives me hope, not least the fact that it was made in the first place and shown in America. The other thing that gives me hope is the common sense of the Iranian women, who clearly won't put up with this stuff forever.

>> Also see in Flickerings:

Revolutionary Cinema of Iran: Iranian Filmmakers Continue to Test Boundaries and Upset Expectations

Movies, Iranian Style: Survey of Directors and Films

Review of Kandahar

Iranian Films at 2002 Flickerings @Cornerstone Festival