Maryam Keshavarz’s love letter to her own family history.

Closing credits, The Persian Version, via Helen Chen

As the lights went off, audiences embraced the very last film of the four-day Athena Film Festival held at Barnard College. The festival spotlights films that tell dynamic stories centering on women’s stories, and its closing film, directed and written by Maryam Keshavarz, was The Persian Version, “a true story (sort of)” that depicts a multigenerational Iranian-American family living in New Jersey. The film has garnered critical acclaim and received nominations at the Chicago International Film Festival and the National Board of Review. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, where Keshavarz won the Audience Award and Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award.  

Layla Mohammadi stars as Leila, the youngest child and only daughter of the Jamshidpour family. Shireen (Niousha Noor), a mother of nine, must face the challenges presented by her husband, Ali Reza. The Jamshidpours travel between Iran and the United States, and the movie shows Leila toggling between two worlds. She smuggles cassette tapes by hiding them on her body and classroom scenes show young Leila (played by Chiara Stella) being pointed out as different, either “American” in Iran or “terrorist” in the American classroom. “In America, I put my faith in science. In Iran, politics,” she says, but concludes that she ultimately “chose art.” Following the narrative of a daughter spun between the world of her enterprising, determined immigrant mother and what Shireen disapproves of, including her own ambitions and queer marriage, Leila is perceived as the “rebel” by her family. Though central to the story, Leila’s character sometimes gets lost in the multiple narrative threads happening concurrently in the story. 

As the father falls sick, Shireen is determined to keep the family strong. Keshavarz’s deft narration of a strong-willed migrant woman offered a clear arc—including the reveal of a family past—that supplemented our understanding of the developing mother-daughter dynamics. Scenes of communal gatherings were displayed through dancing and singing. Rostam Batmanglij oversaw the film’s music and André Jäger the cinematography.

The film follows a relatively standard narrative of a migrant family’s melancholy, a rebellious daughter, a hardworking mother, and a more or less happy resolution with a comic festivity. Keshavarz injected many poignant moments that put Shireen and Leila’s mother-daughter bond under a granular scope. Sharp moments between the duo masterfully reveal their tug-and-pull. With deft storytelling and a symphony of characters, The Persian Version was a striking love story to Keshavarz’s family history, and her own artistic coming-of-age that made this film possible.

This film was distributed by Sony Pictures Classics and Stage 6 Films. The run time of the film was 108 minutes.

Graphic via Athena Film Festival.