CINEOS Premiere

Offside

On the day of a World Cup qualifier, a group of Iranian girls disguised as boys are caught trying to enter a stadium women are banned from — a warm, funny, furious film about an absurd line drawn through a nation's joy.

Panahi keeps you laughing so the injustice can land without crushing you — comedy and indignation arrive in almost equal measure. The confinement and the arbitrary rule sit as low unease beneath the warmth of the girls' instant solidarity, and when the country's team qualifies, that tension opens into shared elation rather than a purge. What stays with you is the image of women listening, from inside the stadium, to a game they are forbidden to watch.