Cinema Releases - Ava

★★★★
‘Film of the Week’
Sadaf Foroughi turns the family drama trope on its head in this superb story of a girl in Iran at war with her mother... and turns it into something resembling a political thriller.’
'Ava is made with superb technique and real style.’
Peter Bradshaw, THE GUARDIAN

★★★★★
‘There is much to absorb in this multi-award-winning coming-of-age drama from writer-director Foroughi, as the age-old battleground of parent and teenager is given a conservative Middle Eastern spin.’
Hilary A White, IRISH INDEPENDENT

★★★★
‘Canadian-Iranian director Sadaf Foroughi offers up a gut-wrenching tale of adolescent rebellion set against the strictures of an oppressive Middle Eastern society. It rivals the work of Aaghar Farhadi in quality…’Foroughi keeps the story unpredictable, even though we are aware throughout that there is little hope for a natural rebel like Ava.’
Joseph Walsh, The i paper

★★★★
‘This impressive first feature from writer and director Sadaf Foroughi uses long takes and buffeting, overlapping dialogue to bring a fresh, vital energy to the inventively framed widescreen screens.'
There's a jagged emotional authenticity scored into the film like initials carved into a desk.’
Wendy Ide, THE OBSERVER

★★★★
‘The shots are exquisitely composed, set out with an impressionistic quality which gives the film a stunning painterly aesthetic.
Foroughi delivers a strong debut with a perfectly pitched performance from Mahour Jabbari.’
Lillian Crawford, LITTLE WHITE LIES

★★★★
‘There are lots of perceptive, knotty moments…Mahour Jabbari is excellent in the title role.’
Edward Porter, THE SUNDAY TIMES

★★★★

‘Making clever use of shallow-depth of field and intriguing framing devices to externalise Ava’s intensifying feelings of entrapment, Foroughi – yet another first timer – has made an auspicious and perceptive film about that real barriers facing the young and the steely defiance required to start pushing past them.’
Alistair Harkness, THE SCOTSMAN

‘Sadaf Foroughi’s drama testimonial to an Iranian adolescence is a cool, sharply calibrated exposé of the country’s culture of repression.’‘Ava ends with a shot that might be considered Foroughi’s personal sign-off, nodding to The 400 Blows…This overt address to the viewer is in keeping with Foroughi’s strongly stylised approach.'
SIGHT AND SOUND

★★★★
‘A visually crisp emotionally devastating, coming-of-age drama from Iran.‘First time director-writer Sadaf Foroughi refuses to swerve blood, sweat and tears, but also finds time to make us smile.’
Charlotte O’Sullivan, THE EVENING STANDARD

★★★★
‘In a society so rigid, Sadaf Foroughi seethes for those who can’t get their fairytale Matilda ending…in this oppressive morality tale. ‘Jabbari’s performance is unforgettable…’‘This is not a victorious story of liberation, like Al-Mansour’s Wadjda or Ergüven’s Mustang—it instead harkens to the unresolved tension of Asghar Farhadi.’
Fatima Sheriff ONE ROOM WITH A VIEW

★★★★
‘From a compelling new filmmaker, Sadaf Foroughi.‘It’s an unforgiving, unforgettable film about loss of freedom from a very interesting new filmmaker.’
Alexa Dalby,DOG AND WOLF

‘Foroughi’s impressive feature debut… with inspiring subtlety and a self-assured, unique visual style.’

Read Elena Lazic’s interview with director Sadaf Foroughi where she talks about visual storytelling, making a feminist film, and avoiding cliche. SEVENTH ROW

'Ava features a breakout performance by Mahour Jabbari as the titular character who starts off as a happy-go-lucky teen who grows more sullen and defiant as the film progresses. Leili Rashidi gives another standout performance as the head mistress of Ava’s school.’
Lauren, BLACKGIRLNERDS

Read Lauren's interview with Sadaf Foroughi discussing what it took to make the leap from short films to her first feature Ava and the difficulties of being a female director in BLACKGIRLNERDS

‘An assured debut which pits traditional and obedience against a natural tendency to rebel.’

‘It’s easy to see why Ava won the FIPRESCI Prize at Toronto International Film Festival in the Discovery section. Jabbari impresses in her first acting role whilst there’s clever use of location to represent the parameters she has to live in.’

‘Ava is a powerful and precise coming-of-age drama.’
Rob Aldam, BACKSTREET MAFIA

'Tonally acrid and visually inventive (the wonderful cinematography is by Sina Kermanizadeh), "Ava" looks repression in the eye and doesn't flinch.

Lurching relentlessly from one conflict to another, the movie distills its emotions - and maintains its momentum - in conversations of remarkably controlled intensity.'
Jeannette Catsoulis, THE NEW YORK TIMES

'Canada-Iran-Qatar co-production Ava offers unforgettable expose of life under a theocracy.'

Kate Taylor, THE GLOBE AND MAIL

'How much of the pain of Sadaf Foroughi's first feature - winner of one of my Fipresci jury's two prizes at the Toronto International Film Festival, a film from Iran - is the pain of being a teenager, and how much is it being a teenager at a particular place and time? How much is personal and how much is institutional, familial, cultural, social, political, architectural?
These are the questions raised by Foroughi's exquisite, unorthodox framings and reframings of her characters, each one posing a separate inquiry. [9-20-17]'
Jonathan Rosenbaum, Questions in and about AVA

Beautifully observed, Sadaf Foroughi's feature debut but but explores the way that, even in societies explicitly controlled by men, it's often women who enforce social rules and seek to control one another's behaviour.

'With complex, nuanced performances that tell us a lot about each individual character's history, this film plays out like the Stanford experiment, investigating the impact of closed, hierarchical structures on human behaviour, yet without losing sight of the humanity of those involved.'

Jennie Kermode, EYE FOR FILM

'...the filmmaker has crafted a compelling, thoughtful portrait of family crisis.'
Rachel Willis, UK Film Review

If '400 Blows' were female and Iranian, it would be the sharply observed 'Ava'.

Ava is a layered, complex character, and one that anyone who was ever a teenager can identify with.

Mick LaSalle, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

'Imagine if "A Separation" took place inside an all-girls high school in Tehran, and don't forget to add in a generous dash of hormones and vicious gossip. Foroughi finds the balance in an overwrought situation.
'It's gut-punch cinema, uneasy and unpredictable, though Foroughi keeps it clicking right along into the rare open ending that feels earned.'
Kate Erbland, INDIWIRE

'Ava is an assured, skillful portrayal of torturous female adolescence.'
Lena Wilson, THE PLAYLIST

'At its most gripping, Ava communicates...familiar adolescent agonies through formal detail that makes them smoulder anew.'
Danny King, VILLAGE VOICE

'Foroughi's assured debut remains a welcomed and insightful reminder that the patriarchy Ava struggles against is still alive and kicking.'
Leonardo Goi, THE FILM STAGE

'An Iranian teenager rebels against her claustrophobic society in Sadaf Foroughi's insightful feature debut.'

Deborah Young, THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER