Widowed for about thirty years, seventy-year-old Mahin has never wanted to remarry, and since her daughter left for abroad, she has lived alone in Tehran in her large house with a garden. Tired of loneliness, after a lunch with friends that prompted her to seek out a man, Mahin approaches elderly taxi driver Faramarz, a former soldier also destined for singlehood, and kindly invites him to her place for an evening. The unexpected encounter will turn into something unforgettable for both of them.
"Home as a place of memories, but now also as a metaphor for prison. Iranian filmmaking duo Maryam Moghaddam & Behtash Sanaeeha couldn't attend the 74th Berlinale, where My Persian Garden (originally Keyke Mahboobe Man) premiered in competition because the police confiscated their passports. What appears to be a bitter comedy about loneliness already contains warning signs of the Iranian regime's control: the neighbor who knocks on the protagonist's door to check if she's home alone, and especially the street scene where the police stop some girls who aren't wearing their hijabs properly. [...]
My Persian Garden becomes a rebellious political gesture hidden behind the bitter irony of the film's frequent shifts in tone, which are handled with great balance and solid writing where the fairytale tone is only a fleeting illusion." (Simone Emiliani)
The film is part of the series I Tulipani dell'Iran, in collaboration with the associations: Donne Libere Iraniane, Donna Vita Libertà Firenze, and Mabuse Cineclub.
