With The Woman Who Knew Too MuchPresented at Cannes, Nader Saeivar has established himself as one of the major voices in contemporary Iranian cinema. Co-screenwriter of Three faces by Jafar Panahi (Best Screenplay Award, 2018), he delivers here a political bombshell, clandestinely filmed in Iran and edited with the help of Panahi, now Palme d'Or 2025 for A simple accident.
The film opens with a long dance scene: women dressed in white and red move against a pristine background, while two figures in black—a mother and her daughter—wind between them like shadows. Everything is there: beauty, oppression, resistance. At the heart of the story is Tarlan (Maryam Boubani, heartbreakingly powerful), a retired teacher and pacifist activist. She is trying to have her daughter, a dancer beaten by her violent husband, a high-ranking official in the Islamic regime, recognized as a victim of murder. This personal struggle is coupled with an implacable indictment: a condemnation of a patriarchal and corrupt power that, even within the family, dictates the law and silences women.
The filmmaker recounts Tarlan's intricate investigation with exemplary restraint. Behind barred windows, closed doors, or inside a car, the old woman is constantly imprisoned. But each time, she escapes, persists, and perseveres. Her quest for justice becomes the symbol of a silent revolt, that of a people and, above all, of a generation of women. The shadow of the movement Woman, Life, FreedomBorn after the death of Jina Mahsa Amini in 2022, it looms over every plan.
Shot with limited resources but astounding inventiveness, the film manages to circumvent censorship by playing with ellipsis, allusion, and symbolic power. A mouse that invades the house, a car speeding through the desert, a dance that liberates bodies… all these signs transform realism into a political poem.
Actress and activist Maryam Boubani imbues the character of Tarlan with a luminous dignity. Her eyes, filled with unwavering kindness, make the film an ode to female courage. She is present in every scene, by turns fragile and indestructible, the embodiment of a resistance that refuses to be silenced.
Despite a more confusing third part, The Woman Who Knew Too Much It remains an essential work: a chronicle of a femicide, but also a manifesto for freedom, dedicated to the women of Iran. In its final shot—a liberating dance, filmed like a dream—Saeivar reminds us: « Once you start dancing, go all the way. A call for perseverance and hope.
