Circumstance

At the risk of sounding melodramatic, falling in love is a beautiful thing. Suddenly there's someone there with whom you get along and/or enjoy fighting with regularly who saves you from the interminable tedium of your own personal thoughts.

And loves it when you suggest going at it.

Through the exchange of ideas you learn and grow constructively and destructively as you challenge one another while suffering/flourishing as your dependency increases.

Having the opportunity to do this is something a lot of people take for granted.

Maryam Keshavarz's Circumstance suffocatingly accentuates the torment of trying to embrace your mutual feelings in a homophobic socially conservative stasis, as Atafeh (Nikohl Boosheri) and Shireen (Sarah Kazemy) fall in love.

Atafeh is the privileged daughter of wealthy parents whose lifestyle is encouraged by the current Iranian regime. Shireen's parents were free thinking writers who didn't fare so well after the Revolution in 1979.

As they explore their affections in the Iranian underground, Keshavarz showcases their blossoming vitality before the morality police step in and rigidly crush it.

One of the policepersons is Atafeh's former drug abusing religiously reformed brother Mehran (Reza Sixo Safai).

If you're wondering how the affects of your socially conservative values and their associated misguided ethical conceptions can distort potentially productive members of your community and turn them into passionate iconoclasts, try and imagine a world where all you want to do is have a heterosexual relationship but everyone keeps telling you it's an unnatural crime for which you will be eternally punished.

And ask yourself, "why do I keep bullying gay people?"

Do you seriously think a loving God would encourage such behaviour?