Leila (Dariush Mehrjui, w/ Leila Hatami)
Staff Picks
•
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.
Up Next in Staff Picks
-
Beautiful Losers
Directed by Aaron Rose, Joshua Leonard • Documentary • With Thomas Campbell, Harmony Korine, Shepard Fairy, Jo Jackson, Chris Johanson, Mike Mills, Steve Espo Powers • 2009 • 90 minutes
BEAUTIFUL LOSERS celebrates the spirit behind one of the most influential cultural moments of a generation. In...
-
Heimat is a Space in Time
Directed by Thomas Heise • Documentary • 2019 • 218 minutes
In HEIMAT IS A SPACE IN TIME, German filmmaker Thomas Heise shares the stories of three generations of his family, in their own words.
Heise sets the tone early, reading an anti-war essay written in 1912 by his grandfather Wilhelm, whe...
-
The 317th Platoon
Directed by Pierre Schoendoerffer • Drama • With Jacques Perrin, Bruno Cremer, Pierre Fabre • 1965 • 95 minutes
1954. The dying days of the French war in Indochina. As the battle of Diên Biên Phu rages, the 317th platoon of the French Far East Expeditionary Corps are ordered to destroy their bas...
