Critics reviews

It's as bruising and wrenching to watch as you might expect of a doc portrait of a juvenile detention center for Iranian girls. It's also scrupulously crafted in a way that rejects bathos, tough-minded and fairly revelatory, well worth the emotional effort demanded.

Oskouei's eye for the telling detail recalls Albert Maysles, and he shares Maysles' invisible camera style. It's fascinating enough when the girls are aware of the camera—their faces are so expressive—but when their awareness drops away, the level of intimacy is extraordinary. Oskouei is their soft-spoken, offscreen confessor, listening to their heartbreaking stories.

A prison documentary is didactic by definition, but Oskouei avoids sententiousness by intercutting scenes of confession with scenes of singing; he shoots the girls playing in the snow in the courtyard, drawing in their notebooks, interviewing one another, and joking about the government (fairly cautious jokes).

It suggests that the center's grounds, where the girls play in the snow or work in a greenhouse, are kinder than the world outside, and that release is a fraught prospect. So if "Starless Dreams" inspires conflicted feelings in viewers, it may be by design. It's hard not to want to flee, and it's hard to look away.

By seeking details and biographical information over speculative assessments from the girls of how an event made them feel, Oskouei takes an ethical stance toward the potential to extract a response from his subject, making the documentary play less like an exposé on the psychology of these girls than a window into the tangible facets of their allegedly criminal acts.

The girls' stories are uniformly heartbreaking, but Starless Dreams is no parade of misery. Like much of the best nonfiction cinema this year, Oskouei knows how to open up routes toward true empathy and understanding by including his own processes and disappointments. It's a film that thinks and feels and asks us to do the same.

Oskouei's documentary reveals loving and bright women, and the film exposes the social corruption that makes these women feel safer in prison than in society. The beauty of Starless Dreams lies in this discourse and how giving a voice to the voiceless helps give them power. It demonstrates that politics doesn't have to be all bluster and no substance in order to make a sincere and real impact.

The film cannot offer any kind of closure to what are dire narratives. We will never know if the girls' often expressed desire to live what they imagine is a normal life is realized by any of them. But Starless Dreams would be more compelling if Oskouei were not so liberal in his use of metaphoric cutaways. We don't need to see a bird huddled in a frozen tree to empathize with the fragility of these teenagers.

One of the must-watch films at the festival this time is Mehrdad Oskouei's Starless Dreams, which is a moving portrait of the inmates of a correction home for girls in Tehran.

The film captures a rare, sorrowful, infinitely complex milieu — that of a juvenile rehabilitation center for "delinquent" girls. Mehrdad Oskouei spent years attempting to gain access to the facility, and the stories, dynamics, and personalities he finds within it are radiant with sadness and hope.

The distinction between filmmaker and his subjects is acknowledged, yet in a sincere and playful manner that actually brings them closer to each other, and us to them. With all illusions of directorial omnipotence out of the way, we can all participate more honestly and fully.

Much like Edet Belzberg's magnificent Children Underground from 2000, the true masterstroke here is in giving the purest platform to otherwise voiceless souls of such boundless strength and character.