By Nahid Persson
From Nahid Persson, the filmmaker of the award-winning Prostitution Behind the Veil, comes an intimate portrait of a polygamist family in a rural Iranian village. Persson reveals the intricacies of the relationships between the four wives, their husband, their astoundingly free-spoken mother-in-law and their numerous children. Sometimes humorous and often heartbreaking, this film follows the daily lives of the wives whose situation has turned them into both bitter rivals and co-conspirators against their abusive husband.
Persson's camera unobtrusively and beautifully captures the range of the family's interactions 每 from peaceful, pastoral scenes of a family picnic, to the temporary chaos caused by a broken faucet in the kitchen, to a furtive, whispered conversation between two wives about the latest beating. The women's work 每 making bread, weaving carpets, milking and herding the sheep 每 provide the background to their frank conversations. Avoiding sensationalism and sentimentality, this film provides unique insights into the practice of polygamy and its effect on the women involved.
Reviews
~ "Challenge[s] both Western assumptions about Islamic women's oppression and the patriarchal social structures that shape their daily lives. The four women manage their relationships with each other with a keen sense of dignity as well as of the interdependence of their interests and those of their children." - Patricia White, Chair, Film & Media Studies, Swarthmore College
~ "Highly Recommended for classes in social and gender relations. Anyone interested in women's rights and family life around the world will find this documentary thought provoking ＃ Often funny, other times sorrowful, but at all times heartfelt, Four Wives 每 One Husband is beautifully shot in vivid cinematography." 每 EMRO Malcom L. Rigsby, Educational Media Reviews Online
Note
~ Recontres International Documentary Film Festival
~ Denver International Film Festival
~ Locarno Int'l Film Festival, Critics' Week
~ Los Angeles Film Festival
Award
~ SILVERDOCS
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