Ackland Film Forum, ‘Women Without Men’ (Iran, 2009)

Made in collaboration with her partner, filmmaker Shoja Azari, director Shirin Neshat’s Women Without Men is an adaptation of the novel by Shahrnush Parsipur, a book banned in Iran by the censors of the Islamic Republic. Both novel and film recount the journeys of four single women of varying age and social status who wind up meeting in a garden outside of Tehran during the summer of 1953, the eve of the coup d’etat that ousted Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh and restored the Shah to power.

This film will be presented with introductory remarks from Ehsan Mashhadi of the Department of Asian Studies.

Tickets are free with a UNC One Card or $7. Tickets are available at the Varsity Theatre.

The Ackland Film Forum’s Fall 2019 series Recent Films by Arab Women Filmmakers is organized by the UNC Department of Asian Studies, the UNC Global Cinema Studies program in the Department of English and Comparative Literature and the Ackland Art Museum. The series is presented in connection with the Ackland’s current exhibition She Who Tells a Story: Women Photographers from Iran and the Arab World.