Leila (Dariush Mehrjui, w/ Leila Hatami)
World Cinema
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2h 5m
Directed by Dariush Mehrjui • Drama • With Leila Hatami, Ali Mosaffa • 1999 • 125 minutes
Reza and Leila, an attractive and affluent young couple deeply in love and recently married, discover that Leila is unable to conceive. Invoking tradition, Reza's mother convinces her daughter-in-law that Reza must, out of necessity, take a second wife to produce an heir. The heartbreak that follows is "in a word, devastating" (The New York Times).
Called "the most interesting and accomplished filmmaker the United States has never heard of" by Godfrey Cheshire in The New York Press, Mehrjui has become more familiar to audiences with the critical and box office success of Leila which topped the critics' lists for best films of 1999.
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