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The Day I Became a Woman

Play trailer Poster for The Day I Became a Woman Released Apr 6, 2001 1h 18m Drama Play Trailer Watchlist
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88% Tomatometer 59 Reviews 83% Popcornmeter 500+ Ratings
A beautiful and intense triptych of three stages of a woman's life, this marks an extraordinary directorial debut for Marziyeh Meshkini. Alternately funny, surreal and heartbreaking, and filled with breathtaking imagery, the film features a script by Mohsen Makhmalbaf, one of the masters of the new Iranian cinema.
The Day I Became a Woman

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Critics Consensus

Meshkini has made an excellent contribution to Iranian cinema with this poetic, emotionally poignant film.

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Critics Reviews

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Richard Brody New Yorker A masterwork of symbolic cinema; it depicts, with vast imagination, the ordeals faced by women in modern Iranian society. Aug 26, 2019 Full Review Empire Magazine Rated: 4/5 Dec 30, 2006 Full Review Glenn Lovell San Jose Mercury News Rated: 3.5/4 Apr 14, 2005 Full Review Amelie Lasker FF2 Media Makhmalbaf's skill as a storyteller shines in her ability to condense meaning into an image or snippet of dialogue. Feb 25, 2021 Full Review Jeffrey M. Anderson Combustible Celluloid This is just about the lightest and most agreeable of the umpteen Iranian films I've seen. May 26, 2006 Full Review Film Threat Rated: 3.5/5 Dec 17, 2005 Full Review Read all reviews

Audience Reviews

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s r A visual film that shows us Iranian culture through three tales about women. It was well made. Saw it on TCM. Rated 3 out of 5 stars 03/31/23 Full Review Audience Member most beautiful movie Rated 5 out of 5 stars 01/24/23 Full Review Audience Member Well... It turns out that renowned Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf has a wife. Her name is Marzieh Meshkini. She is a filmmaker... ...and, my God, she made a masterpiece of contemporary cinema. <i>The Day I Became a Woman</i> consists of three interconnected stories that depict the lifestyle of Iranian women in modernity throughout three of her life stages: infancy, young adulthood and old age. + <b> Episode I: "Hawa".-</b> A young girl faces the consequences of turning into a nine-year-old girl, as she is no longer able to play with her old male friends because she has finally become a woman. + <b>Episode II: "Ahoo".-</b> A recently married young woman embarks on a purely symbolic race againts the limitations imposed by male domination and paternalistic chauvinism perpetrated by men who care about their own honor as representative of the family's honor. + <b>Episode III: "Houra".-</b> An old woman hires a small boy and his friends, and visits numerous malls to buy a considerable amount of house appliances with the purpose of establishing a "fictional" house at the beach. As she contemplates her current state of existence, she realizes that the freedom she was seeking with the purchase of everything material she lacked in her past life might indicate that her freedom is actually farer than what she thought beforehand. The three stories are interconnected by character appearances, as it was mentioned, and this is relevant. Meshkini not only wants to state that this story applies to contemporary Iran, but she also wants to make a statement of three stages set in the same era, rather than the life quality of Iranian women throughout three generations. It is tempting to compare these three stories with Yusuf's Trilogy by Kaplanoglu, which placed the same character in alternate realities and chronologically backwards and with loose interconnections, but the main differentiation is the social context and the fact that the movie situates us in the present. Filmed as a natural spectacle with minimalistic grandeur (not a contradiction in terms), <i>The Day I Became a Woman</i> is a reflexive account about sociocultural deprivation of liberty against women in a geographic area so much pervaded by religious and cultural fundamentalisms. Twelve years before Haifaa Al-Mansour became the first female filmmaker in Saudi Arabia, international festivals witnessed this honest gem, poetic in its construction and with an emotional tone that only women can provide. So, can a man direct a project about the conflicts against women? The answer is yes, and the <b>obligatory</b> film to watch back-to-back with this one, released exactly the same year, is the equally striking <i>Dayereh</i> (2000), by Jafar Panahi. <i>"Girl, you'll be a woman soon..."</i> 97/100 Rated 5 out of 5 stars 01/22/23 Full Review Audience Member I got the symbolic meaning behind seemingly intertwined three episode, but I feel there's lack of spirit in the movie, that at the end of the movie I fail to capture the ultimate purpose and meaning that it's trying to send. Rated 3 out of 5 stars 02/16/23 Full Review Audience Member Taking snapshots of three women in various places in life, Meshkini creates a strong statement on the need for feminism in an oppressive, patriarchal Iranian culture. Rated 4 out of 5 stars 02/10/23 Full Review Audience Member Just because a movie is from Iran and about women, doesn't make it good. Rated 2 out of 5 stars 01/25/23 Full Review Read all reviews
The Day I Became a Woman

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Cast & Crew

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Movie Info

Synopsis A beautiful and intense triptych of three stages of a woman's life, this marks an extraordinary directorial debut for Marziyeh Meshkini. Alternately funny, surreal and heartbreaking, and filled with breathtaking imagery, the film features a script by Mohsen Makhmalbaf, one of the masters of the new Iranian cinema.
Director
Marzieh Meshkini
Producer
Mohsen Makhmalbaf
Screenwriter
Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Mohsen Makhmalbaf
Distributor
Shooting Gallery
Genre
Drama
Original Language
Persian
Release Date (Theaters)
Apr 6, 2001, Wide
Release Date (DVD)
Nov 8, 2011
Box Office (Gross USA)
$344.2K
Runtime
1h 18m