Hussein is a lumbering war veteran swollen by cortisone (for war-induced pain) and reduced to delivering pizzas at night, as he bears witness to the vanities of the city’s wealthy. When an eccentric socialite gives him a taste of luxury, Hussein can no longer accept his lowly status.

Working from a script by Abbas Kiarostami, Iranian maestro Jafar Panahi fashions a genre-adjacent thriller of ferocious intensity. Opening with an alarming heist sequence, Crimson Gold trawls the criminal underbelly of postwar Tehran for a fierce critique of the city’s socioeconomic divide.