For seven years, director Mehrdad Oskouei tentatively worked with Iranian authorities to film the lives of women locked in a detention facility outside of Tehran. Sentenced for murder, drug dealing, possession, hijacking cars, and many other crimes, the young women, who answer to a number, a name, or just “nobody,” unflinchingly discuss their various crimes, and the hell that awaits them in society and the privacy of their own homes.
Many of the young women want freedom, but many of them also find solace and redemption inside the walls of the prison, and do not in any way seek release back to the abuses at the hands of their families. One of the most acclaimed films of the year. "Roger Ebert once called the movies 'a machine that generates empathy,' and Starless Dreams ... is just such a machine.” —Stephen Holden, The New York Times
Director’s Biography
Mehrdad Oskouei: Born in Tehran in 1969, Mehrdad Oskouei received his MFA in film directing from the Department of Film and Theater of Tehran University of Fine Art. He is at once a director, a photographer, and a performance artist, whose many documentaries have won prizes around the world.
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