Leila's Brothers

Full of memorable and great quotes. High budget, gorgeous product. The best movie I've watched this year till this moment. I cried and laughed, I yelled at the screen and punched my sofa. This was a true emotional rollercoaster. I can't. Very relatable and easy to understand. Recommended 100%.

Story line/story telling: 10 out of 10 Acting and performance: 10 out of 10 Ending: 100 out of 10 Script: 100 out of 10 Sceneries and visuals: 10 out of 10 This drama worth watching. It was not nagging about deficiencies and lacks, quite opposite, it was all about the potentials of fixing issues. I'm all about it.

In Saeed Roustaee's engaging Iranian film "Leila's Brothers" (2022), viewers are pulled into a gripping story that tackles the challenges of family conflict and financial struggles. Set in modern-day Tehran, the film follows Leila, played by the talented Taraneh Alidoosti, as she works hard to carve out a stable career for herself while dealing with her four quarrelsome but loving brothers.

Roustaee's storytelling is top-notch, diving deep into each character's complexities, which keeps the audience hooked. The tension escalates when their self-absorbed father fixates on becoming the head of the extended family, a position that comes with a hefty cash prize that could jeopardize his children's business dreams.

The film's wide-ranging narrative is complemented by its skillfully woven emotional highs and lows, leading to some truly touching and sometimes heartbreaking scenes. "Leila's Brothers" stands out as a powerful anti-patriarchal tale, earning the FIPRESCI Critics' Prize at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival. However, despite its critical acclaim, the film is still banned from being shown in Iran, highlighting its provocative and challenging subject matter.

Where to begin... I am literally lost on how to begin describing the many groundbreaking attributes of the movie. What made me tear up over every critical scene was that nothing extraordinary happened. The movie somehow managed to include both the pace of a Hollywood movie and the realistic non-heroic (even anti-heroic) traits of European cinema.

The way the flawed heroin revolved into being an anti-heroin, a victim, a passive, an evil, and the way she crawled back into being "only human" but a blatantly frank and active rebel haunts every inch of my being.

The wholistic symbolism portraying the society it stemmed from could not execute the concepts in a better way and dialogues could not be more purposefully composed to include typical cultural moments of miscommunication, introspective vulnerability, misunderstanding, raging through.

The only thing I would change about the movie is the acting. Each character is acting their role from a previous movie which indicates that the focus was more on the plot that the directing. At points one would sense that the characters have not acquired sympathy with the role they are playing (well except for Mr. Poursamimi, he could not have done better)

As someone who closely follows the roller coaster of events in Iran, I could relate to it very well. The story line is simple but the character development and layers of complexity introduced as you keep watching make it really exciting and deep. One of the best movies I've ever watched from a director who was under 30 when he made this. The movie is so realistic without any exaggeration. Our society suffers from such miserable culture. The movie is such a brilliant illustration of what we are deeply struggle whit. I think we need this revolution by the name of woman, life, freedom to overcome all negative aspects of old believes, thoughts and pains.

The father of this family in movie is somehow symbolicly like the person who is running country of Iran who is not thinking about his children's job and future of his people and only thinking about other people not his people.

After the brilliant La Loi de Téhéran, Saeed Roustaee (a name to remember) confirms that he is one of the most talented filmmakers of the moment as could be a Park Chan-wook or a Bong Joon-ho. A fully mastered work from A to ZA , and above all a real actor's director with special mention for the breathtaking crowd scenes that we had already seen in The Law of Tehran and that we see again here (the strike at the factory, the wedding...).

Saeed Roustae gives us a real family fresco, tragic and brulsesque as Roustaee rightly says with an ode to the courage and wisdom of women, filmed with real finesse.

Even if most of the actors are extraordinary, Taraneh Alidoosti who is simply magnificent dominates the film (it is not for nothing that the title is Leila and her brothers).

And in addition we see Undertaker, Broke Lesnar and Randy Orton (and we are entitled to a debate on them, Triple H and Big Show being cited).

In short, undoubtedly one of the best films of 2022, and to say that it did not win the Palme d'Or at Cannes.