Offside

This internationally award-winning film casually and sometimes caustically uncovers what binds us — and blinds us — to the differences between our ways of life in the West with modern day Iran. Fascinating, funny and tragic, it’s “a gem of comic action… that explores the ambiguity between the sexes” (The Hollywood Reporter). The Tehran soccer stadium roars with 100,000 cheering men — and only men. According to Islamic custom, women are not allowed, and the ambitious girls who manage to sneak in are caught and sent to a holding pen, guarded by male soldiers their own age. Duty makes the young men and women adversaries, but duty can’t overcome their shared dreams, their mutual attraction, and ultimately their overriding sense of national pride and humanity.

*Silver Bear – Berlin Film Festival 2006