85
Metascore
5 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 90The New York TimesKristen Yoonsoo KimThe New York TimesKristen Yoonsoo KimMehrdad Oskouei’s latest documentary, Sunless Shadows, is a startling, raw confrontation with Iran’s patriarchy.
- It’s a picture of love that has led first to desperation and incarceration, and now to a sort of suspended grief, as the girls and mothers face an uncertain future, unsure whether they will ever be reunited, hope mixing with fear to the last.
- 83The A.V. ClubA.A. DowdThe A.V. ClubA.A. DowdThis is something different: an acknowledgement that, for many young women in Iran, prison may offer an escape from everyday horrors, to say nothing of the paradoxical freedom it affords them.
- 75Slant MagazineDiego SemereneSlant MagazineDiego SemereneRedolent of Claude Lanzmann’s approach, Mehrdad Oskouei strips his images to their barest bones as his subjects openly speak about their traumas, as if trying to avoid aestheticizing their pain.