CIRCUMSTANCE (France, USA, Iran, Lebanon)

                                  Coachella Valley Premiere            
                                          Sneak Preview

Winner of the Audience Award at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Maryam Keshavarz’s debut film is a lush, innovative coming-of-age story set in the underground art scene of Tehran.  Iranian teenager Atafeh and her best friend, Shireen, are defining the evolving boundaries of their intense friendship when Atafeh’s brother Mehran returns home from a drug rehabilitation center and announces he’s joining the morality police.  When he makes the girls’ questionable friendship his target, Atafeh finds herself the victim of her brother’s dangerous obsession.  Summary written by Outfest Film Festival 2011   Opens in NY and LA on Aug 26.

Writer:  Maryam Keshavarz (born in New York) is an Iranian-American filmmaker
Director:  Maryam Keshavarz
Composer:  Gingger Shankar
Distributor:  Wolfe Releasing
Genre:  Drama
Runtime:  107 min.
Country:  France | USA | Iran
Language:  Persian
Rating:  R for sexual content, language and some drug use

FESTIVALS: USA: Sundance Film Festival; New Directors/New Films, NY; San Francisco International Film Festival; Independent Film Festival of Boston; Outfest Film Festival, Los Angeles; NewFest 2011, New York

AWARDS: Sundance Film Festival 2011 – Audience Award, Drama; Outfest 2011 – Audience Award for Outstanding First U.S. Dramatic Feature; NewFest 2011 – Best Narrative Film

“Circumstance walks the line of a revolution for two hours, never once tripping over its feet.” The Film Stage, Sundance review

“Circumstance” is sneaky. It starts out as a simple tale of teenage idealism and perhaps forbidden love, and that thread certainly continues throughout the entire film.  The clever thing that writer/director Maryam Keshavarz does is to show a repressive society not just as an exterior threat, but a cage its prisoners have a part in constructing.” eFilmCritic

Official Website w/Trailer: http://www.takepart.com/circumstance