I Am Nasrine is one of those small, low-budget films showing somewhere awkward on a day and time that probably aren’t ideal but you can’t expect everything in life to be handed to you on a plate, and it’s worth the effort, if you can stir yourself sufficiently. (Can you? Most people I asked said you couldn’t, but I believe in you, as I always have.) Its writer-director, Tina Gharavi, who is Iranian-born but is now a lecturer in Digital Media at Newcastle University, was nominated for a Bafta for most outstanding debut, and although it is one of those films about the immigration experience, and a young woman who flees her home country for one of those better lives that could well turn out worse, it’s not what I would call An Earnestly Grim Wrist Slitter. Instead, it is affectionate, humane, tender and, ultimately, optimistic. So stir yourself, and prove I am right, for once in my life.
The film opens in modern-day Tehran — where, I now know, Gharavi had to film secretly — with Nasrine, as played by Micsha Sadeghi, who has one of those blissful faces that may or may not be beautiful, and it doesn’t matter.
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