Portrait of a Lady Far Away

World-weary Ahmed (Ershadi) slumps beneath his current burdens: he’s staying up all night to meet his son’s red-eye flight, his elderly parents are at each other’s throats and a woman on his answering machine says she’s going to commit suicide, which sends Ahmed on a surreal journey into the night with an enigmatic actress (Hatami). Borrowing ‘Taste of Cherry’s’ intimations of suicide as well as its lead actor, Mosaffa’s rich, immersive debut is at once mordantly funny and haunted by manifold intimations of mortality; its subject is nothing less than the unbearable lightness of being.