Kritiken

Saeed Roustayi develops highly complex backgrounds and personalities to unpack the damages of poverty... Whether it be careless dancing at the family wedding or alarming self-awareness, humor and joy are sprinkled throughout the movie.

This is a long, bad film about pontificating imbeciles who barely resemble actual human beings, and the whole mess is played as if it were some sort of Greek tragedy.

Leila’s Brothers dedicates itself to a realistically staged family dynamic, so much so that, as in real life, the domestic arguments go in circles and become a tad repetitive.

They [the family] are treated with humane warmth by director Saeed Roustayi, who deftly shows how their flaws are at least partly the products of the society in which they exist. He is clearly a major talent despite a relatively brief back catalogue.

The true star of “Leila’s Brothers” is the rich screenplay brimming with humanity, depth, and humor that makes for a genuinely emotional portrait of an imperfect family, even if it walks the fine line of being a typical melodrama... Roustaee’s filmmaking is subtle yet leaves a lasting impression, solidifying him as one to watch.

It's the first film I've seen from Roustaee, and while initially I thought he needed someone to pare down his script, by the end I was convinced that he knows exactly what he's doing.

In need of a tighter edit as well as some finesse regarding Leila’s interiority instead of the global economic ripple effects of Trump opening up a separate tangent of woe, it’s a compromised melodrama which should hit a lot harder than it does.

Saeed Roustayi delivers a big, absorbing, character-driven family drama in the Italian-American style with fierce performances, a huge set-piece wedding scene and touches of Visconti’s Rocco and His Brothers and Coppola’s The Godfather.

Filled with powerhouse turns by an ensemble cast... Leila’s Brothers reveals the 32-year-old Roustaee to be a masterly, if aggressively unwieldy, filmmaker whose voice is clearly one to be reckoned with.

Thanks to the director’s command of his material, the entanglements we witness may be unbelievably challenging and yet do not require any suspension of disbelief. This subtle, convincing emotional tour-de-force doesn’t feel as long as its generous running time.

Dense with overlapping dialogue, suffocating social situations and shifting point-of-view, Roustaee’s style is a stark departure from the straightforward, focused Iranian movies that have found their way into the world so far...

It’s like literary arthouse soap opera in the best possible way, a film whose every frame and line of dialogue is calculated to perfection, and the kind of credibly intricate plotting – with new reveals parcelled out like small gifts – that keeps you compelled (and then some) from the first frame till the last.