Under the Moonlight

A young man, Seyyed, goes through a crisis of faith as he approaches 'taking the turban' - becoming a cleric - in accordance with his father's wishes. Sceptical of the dogma taught him in the seminary, Seyyed nevertheless buys the necessary vestments - but a street kid makes off with them, forcing the trainee mullah to venture into a shocking Tehran subculture to retrieve them. With its explicit references to prostitution, drug pushing and the plight of the homeless, writer/director Mir-Karimi's neo-realism ties in with The Circle and Under the Skin of the City, evidence of an emboldened reformist imperative in new Iranian cinema. Unlike those two, however, this is also a religious film, a kind of Islamic Pilgrim's Progress.