Don

Continuing the Iranian tradition of outstanding performances by non-professional juveniles, Farhad Bahremand proves persistent, resourceful, impudent and tragically vulnerable in this lacerating realist satire from the ever-contentious Abolfazl Jalili. As his junkie father forgot to register his birth, the nine-year-old is ineligible for the ID card that would enable him to attend school and earn the meagre wage needed by his destitute family. But the camera can only watch helplessly as Farhad pleads with both unflinchingly jobsworth civil servants to secure his papers and exploitative employers to land various menial jobs. Affecting, amusing and, ultimately, deeply depressing, it exposes the iniquities of slum life that the Iranian authorities would rather we didn't see.