Tehran Taboo

Blending multiple narratives into a complex picture of contemporary life in Iran’s most populous city, TEHRAN TABOO follows a young woman in need of an operation to “restore” her virginity; a divorce judge (in the Islamic Revolutionary Court) who extorts favors from a prostitute; a pregnant woman desperate to work for a living so she may live independently; and young women (purportedly virgins) being sold to Dubai for large sums of money. The result is a complicated portrait of a social order in which women are at the bottom rung of a ladder built on religion, the law, and plain old misogyny.