Another poignant and realistic drama comes to us from Iran, and the local activist for human rights, especially women’s rights, Mahnaz Mohammadi, made a film that problematizes the situation in the society there. “Son – Mother” was premiered at the festival in Toronto, and as the name of the film suggests, it is a story about the relationship between a son and a mother. Mohammadi divided the film into two chapters, and in the first we follow the story from the perspective of the mother, the widow Leila, who is the mother of a 12-year-old son, Amirali, and a little girl. She works a demanding physical job in a factory that is in serious trouble, mostly due to sanctions, and Leila’s chance to get out of poverty and misery will appear when the driver of the factory bus offers her marriage.
Kazem is also a widower, a slightly older guy who doesn’t seem like a bad man, but since this is an Iranian film, of course some absurdity of the society and system there has to be prevented. As Kazem has a daughter of the same age as Leila’s son, his only condition is that she must get rid of her son if she agrees to the marriage, as it would be inappropriate for the boy to live under the same roof as his daughter. And although at first Leila is determined and does not want to leave her son, after she is fired from the factory, she will realize that she has no choice and will agree to the marriage. Fortunately, or so it seems to her, there is an old neighbor who offers her help and recommends that she leave her son in a boarding school for deaf children until she can arrange with her new husband to accept her son as well, and after Amirali finishes there, the story we begin to follow from his perspective and that story becomes more and more terrible and sad.
“Son – Mother” was shot in a typical Iranian naturalistic style, and although I have already watched countless films from that country, I am always surprised and shocked by the rigidity and dullness of the society there, which is obviously an inexhaustible inspiration for all those filmmakers. Narratively, this was also interesting, because while the first chapter is called Son, we follow the story of the mother, while in the second chapter, called Mother, we actually see the fate of the son. Once again, it is a film that problematizes the status of women in Iranian society, and practically with every new film from that country, we get a deeper and better insight into how women there have almost no rights and how they are largely dependent on the mercy of men.