Hide Your Words

A disturbing and memorable half-hour-shy documentary offering a microcosmic view of the ongoing struggle in Iran between hard-line conservatives who wish to maintain the harsh status quo and a younger generation who want to bring their society (and their own lives) into the 21st century, Behnam Behzadi's Hide Your Words focuses on a family in which two teenage sisters and their father appear to have the same goals. The sisters want to delay marriage until their early 20s, in order to finish their education and establish careers (as a teacher and a doctor)—they particularly want to avoid the fate of a 14-year-old classmate who was forced to marry a 73-year-old man (not to mention their other sisters, who were married off before reaching their teen years). The father is supportive of his daughters' aspirations—as long as they are together on camera—but he confides to the filmmaker that the girls' education will only continue until he locates suitors. The sisters, however, have their own secret plans. Cultural and generational clashes are hardly new, but Hide Your Words brings deeper resonance to these issues with its memorable portrait of a family and a nation at war with itself. Highly recommended. Aud: C, P. (P. Hall)