The lyrical animation, and especially an expressive use of shadows which illuminates emotion in the actors' faces, makes it all appear to be unfolding in a woozy dream.

| Jan 26, 2019

A striking debut feature from Soozandeh. Very excited to see what he comes up with next.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 8, 2018

This is fearless, potent storytelling.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 7, 2018

The film get its transgressive thrill from the collision of ancient theocratic authoritarianism and 21st-century licentiousness.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 5, 2018

[An] impressive debut feature...

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 4, 2018

The ace in the film's style pack is the animation. Without it, we might feel we're watching just another docudrama about life and death in fanatical Islam.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 3, 2018

Happily, Soozandah is more humanist than polemicist, so that what follows is less about the system than the people navigating it.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 6, 2018

These tales are brimming with urgency and conflict and serve as powerful reminders of the liberties and autonomy those of us living in the free world too often take for granted.

| Mar 23, 2018

It's so heavily loaded with grievances that it begins to feel one-dimensional, though it's impossible to argue with its compassion for its characters, whose sufferings are imposed by an intensely repressive society.

| Feb 28, 2018

Like no Iranian movie I've seen, Tehran Taboo reveals the routine hypocrisy of people who observe and even enforce a strict religious code but secretly indulge in the pleasures of the flesh.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 15, 2018

Using skillful, involving storytelling and beautifully executed rotoscoped photography, director Ali Soozandeh creates a world of intersecting urban miseries and challenges.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 14, 2018

"Tehran Taboo" aims to expose systemic hypocrisy; in that respect, it is brisk and bracing.

| Feb 14, 2018

Tehran Taboo is full of astute, and poetically staged, critiques of the parallel worlds resulting from Iran's police state.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Feb 14, 2018

None of this is revelatory - these issues have been addressed in Iranian films before - but it's still gripping.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jan 20, 2018

An audacious, if somewhat didactic, debut.

| May 22, 2017