Day Break

There's more than a hint of Franz Kafka in Hamid Rahmanian's debut feature, which dramatizes a little-known fact of the Iranian penal system: those convicted of murder and sentenced to death can only be executed if the families of their victims are present. The relatives also have the option of forgiving the criminal, thereby effectively commuting the sentence to imprisonment, or offering them a pardon in exchange for compensation. Focusing on a man named Mansour (Hosein Yari), whose hanging has been postponed for the third time because the family of the man he killed has not appeared, the film is initially structured like a documentary, with a film crew entering the prison along with the condemned man's family for a supposed last visit. But it soon abandons that approach, embarking on a narrative that juxtaposes the despondent Mansour's increasingly suicidal attitude about his fate with his recollections about his former life and how he was driven to homicide (he brought his parents and young wife from their native village to Tehran, and then cracked after he was unable to find a job and couldn't support them). With its flashback montages, Day Break is a bit oblique and artsy at times, but overall it's an effectively moody piece that explores what can happen when a contemporary Muslim government tries to apply the strictures of Islamic law. Recommended. (F. Swietek)