Leila's Brothers

This panoramic family drama – which plays out like a Tehran-based, geopolitical take on Charles Dickens or Émile Zola – heralds one of Iran’s most exciting up-and-coming cinematic voices.

Forty years old and unmarried, Leila is the smartest, most capable person in her family. As the only one with a reliable income, she supports her selfish, ungrateful parents and four unaccomplished brothers – yet, for her troubles, receives nothing but scorn. When she comes up with a plan that could lift them all out of financial hardship, her father derails things by choosing to ransom their potential prosperity for a dubious honour. This exacerbates the family’s tensions, and things only worsen when US sanctions crash the Iranian economy, sending Leila’s dreams likewise crashing down.

Only three features into his career, writer/director Saeed Roustayi (Just 6.5, MIFF 2020) is already being compared to Asghar Farhadi (The Salesman, MIFF 2016) – and not just for his casting of Farhadi regular Taraneh Alidoosti, who is breathtaking here as Leila alongside the extraordinary ensemble cast. There are other comparisons being thrown around as well, auteur Francis Ford Coppola and playwright Arthur Miller key among them. It’s not hard to see why: Leila’s Brothers is an epic, intricately plotted, novelistic family saga that, by virtue of its Tehran setting, also offers scathing commentary on misogyny and the consequences of global politics on ordinary people.

“A knockout … like a literary arthouse soap opera in the best possible way, a film whose every frame and line of dialogue is calculated to perfection.” – Little White Lies