Woman and Child

Official Selection, 2025 Cannes Film Festival

Mahnaz is a 40-year-old nurse in love with the charming ambulance driver Hamid. Sure, he runs some side hustles to make ends meet, but Mahnaz has a busy life of her own to juggle. A single mom of two kids, Mahnaz lives with her mother and sister. Her teenager Aliyar is an unruly whirlwind, subcontracting homework to his sister, escaping on rooftops to gamble during class, mocking the principal in Instagram videos. When Hamid insists on an engagement ceremony, a reluctant Mahnaz must figure out how to hide evidence that she has children–except Aliyar is suspended from school, and her kids have no idea she is remarrying. When an unthinkable catastrophe shatters their world, Mahnaz’ hellbent quest for retribution forces a reckoning with the tensions undergirding modern society.

Celebrated for social storytelling in populist genres, filmmaker Saeed Roustaee injects WOMAN AND CHILD’s domestic drama with the same pulse-quickening intensity of his drug trafficking thriller Just 6.5 (SDAFF ‘19). A modern Greek tragedy, WOMAN AND CHILD’s cinematic heat comes from the gendered palpitations beneath the surface and women negotiating pockets of freedom within a maze expressly designed to deny equal footing. A third entry in his series about Iranian women, WOMAN AND CHILD is Roustaee’s first film since a six month prison sentence and five year filmmaking ban (subsequently commuted) for his film Leila’s Brothers. Parinaz Izadyar delivers a riveting performance of a woman trying all angles, and Roustaee regular Payman Maadi plays the hapless beneficiary of merely being a man.

– Christina Ree