A Woman Without A Name

Farzad Khoshdast • 80m

زنی که نام ندارد Directed by Farzad Khoshdast • 2018 • Iran Behind the solid concrete walls of the women's prison Gharchak in Iran's capital, Tehran, four young women open the door to their lives and innermost thoughts. They reveal their downfall into substance abuse and violent crime, which led to a life behind bars. All four are sentenced to several years of imprisonment for assault and murder. Their children play on the grey stone floor in the prison, where the women's only contact to the outside world is through a pay phone. Violence, coercion, abuse and sexual assaults were the recurring reasons why the young women broke with the outside world's expectations of proper female behavior – and sacrificed their lives in the process. Farzad Khoshdast's paradoxically poetic 'A Woman Without a Name' is rich in both shades and contrasts. With the prison as a final destination and a symbolic backdrop, the film also addresses the structural causes for the young women's downfall – which in their own words was a desperate attempt to get away from a tough reality.