Ten

Ten (2002) is Abbas Kiarostami's Iranian drama, and you can watch it online on iFILM. The whole film is built from ten conversations inside a car moving through Tehran: two cameras fixed to the dashboard, the director almost absent, and nothing holding the frame but live talk.

Behind the wheel is a young divorced woman (Mania Akbari). Her passengers change from one segment to the next — a stubborn son who never forgave her for the divorce, her sister, a devout old woman headed to a shrine, a jilted bride, a streetwalker. They argue about marriage and divorce, about faith, about a mother's right to a life of her own. There is no plot in the usual sense, only ten cross-sections of what a woman's lot looks like in modern Iran.

Kiarostami, who made Taste of Cherry and won the Palme d'Or, shoots this almost as a document: non-professional actors, the real flow of the city through the glass, barely a visible cut. It premiered at Cannes. Quiet, demanding cinema for anyone drawn to conversation as form and to Iran with no gloss on it. Stream Ten (2002) online on iFILM.