Offside (2006 Iranian film)
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| Directed by | Jafar Panahi |
| Written by | Jafar Panahi Shadmehr Rastin |
| Starring | Shima Mobarak-Shahi Safar Samandar Shayesteh Irani Ayda Sadeqi Golnaz Farmani |
| Music by | Yuval Barazani Korosh Bozorgpour |
| Cinematography | Rami Agami Mahmoud Kalari |
| Edited by | Jafar Panahi |
| Distributed by | Sony Pictures Classics |
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Release date
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Running time
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93 minutes |
| Country | Iran |
| Language | Persian |
| Budget | $2,500 (estimated) |
Offside (Persian: آفساید ) is a 2006 Iranian film directed by Jafar Panahi, about girls who try to watch a World Cup qualifying match but are forbidden by law because of their sex. Female fans are not allowed to enter football stadiums in Iran on the grounds that there will be a high risk of violence or verbal abuse against them. The film was inspired by the director's daughter, who decided to attend a game anyway. The film was shot in Iran but its screening was banned there.
Most of the characters in the film are not named.
A girl disguises herself as a boy to go attend the 2006 World Cup qualifying match between Iran and Bahrain. She travels by bus with a group of male fans, some of whom notice her gender, but do not tell anyone. At the stadium, she persuades a reluctant ticket tout to sell her a ticket; he only agrees to do so at an inflated price. The girl tries to slip through security, but she is spotted and arrested. She is put in a holding pen on the stadium roof with several other women who have also been caught; the pen is frustratingly close to a window onto the match, but the women are at the wrong angle to see it.
The women are guarded by several soldiers, all of whom are just doing their national service; one in particular is an Iranian Azeri boy from Tabriz who just wants to return to his farm. The soldiers are bored and do not particularly care whether women should be allowed to attend football matches; however, they guard the women carefully for fear of their "chief", who could come by at any moment. They occasionally give commentary on the match to the women.
One of the younger girls needs to go to the toilet, but of course there is no women's toilet in the stadium. A soldier is deputed to escort her to the men's toilet, which he does by an increasingly farcical process: first disguising her face with a poster of a football star, then throwing a number of angry men out of the toilet and blockading any more from entering. During the chaos, the girl escapes into the stadium, although she returns to the holding pen shortly after as she is worried about the soldier from Tabriz getting into trouble.
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