Here Without Me

Single mother Farideh, now middle-aged but with traces of an earlier beauty, works in a food processing plant and moonlights as a cosmetics telemarketer to make ends meet. These include paying for her daughter’s educational and medical bills. Yalda is at marriageable age but her shyness, her delicate constitution and the brace on her leg make meeting eligible young men a difficult prospect. Her mother has enrolled Yalda in various improvement courses but Yalda’s intense timidity and physical impediments lead her to prefer wandering the city to attending classes. Her brother Ehsan, meanwhile, feels equally stifled at his job in a local warehouse. He writes poetry, reads film magazines and spends whatever spare time he can find at the local moviehouse. With no father in the household, Ehsan is the default male presence, a role for which he has little desire or aptitude. Mostly, he dreams of becoming a writer and of escaping the trap of family obligations. But Ehsan’s work colleague, Reza, is of great interest to both Yalda and her mother. Yalda has had a crush on him since she overheard him singing and her mother is quick to realize Reza’s matrimonial potential. “Why don’t you invite your friend home for dinner?” she suggests to Ehsan… —Montreal Film Festival