As the youngest child in a large family of Iranian immigrants, Leila (Layla Mohammadi) has always felt like she hasn’t lived up to expectations; especially her often distracted mother Shireen (Niousha Noor). In her current years as a young adult, Leila has felt more distance grown between her and her mom. And as an expectant mother after a one-night-stand with an eccentric actor (Tom Byrne), Leila only anticipates the worse.
The anxiety-inducing energy in the short film Motherland speaks to Jasmin Mozzaffari’s multifaceted talents as a storyteller.
In 2010, Jafar Panahi was arrested on the charge of making propaganda against Iran and was sentenced to not make any films for twenty years. To a filmmaker, that is akin to having one’s tongue cut off. Panahi, however, did not take that sentence into consideration; the last nine years seeing four new releases from him, making it the most prolific chapter of his career. This new act of revolutionary filmmaking has created some of…