It's easy to fall in love with the young women on screen in Starless Dreams. Director Mehrdad Oskouei spent several weeks inside an Iranian state juvenile correctional facility for girls, and put together a beautiful and heartbreaking portrait of world-weary teenagers in a place that, despite being forced confinement, may be a better home than they have ever known.
Inside the dormitory, the inmates are vibrant and emotional. Whatever the situation, at least one girl is off to the side of things, in tears. But there is an incredible amount of joy on display. They play i the snow, or dance and sing raucously to Iranian pop songs...although the lyrics to those songs are often very dark. They sing with gusto songs of being old before their time, and how death awaits. Sometimes pulling the sound crew's boom mike down to them to give their performance that additional sense of flair.
Oskouei's soothing baritone comes from behind the camera, and his subjects respond with raw honesty. Inside the facility, the girls are free to be young. Their shared backgrounds foster an instant sense of camaraderie. There is no prison hierarchy, since all of their stories stem from the same place. They use the community to comfort each other and enjoy the company of peers in a place where they will not be "bothered", a euphemism that creates dread each time it is used.
Avoiding the word "rape" seems deliberate. "Bothered" serves as the official state metaphor for all manner of sexual assault. The bureaucratic process on display is as disturbing the personal stories told. Administrators run down a list of horrors in intake interviews. "Did your mother burn you?", "How did she burn you", and on-and-on. Checking off boxes for situations that *should* trigger criminal charges for their parents. It does seem odd that a government so comfortable with harsh punishments does not use those tactics to protect its most vulnerable.
My favorite scene is a prayer meeting, where the girls brazenly take an Imam to task. The inmates dutifully perform their prayers. But this is followed with an intense question and answer session with the holy man. One of the girls rails against the treatment of women and children, another tells of how the judge called her a bastard.
Shouting through tears, she asks "Where was my sin? Was I there when I was made?"
Starless Dreams heaps as much joy on the viewer as possible, and almost succeeds in giving us faith for their future. The last girl released in the film progresses through utter despair at the thought of going home, to a reconciliation (of sorts) with her family that gives her a sense of giddy hope. But the perfunctory physical contact with her father, as opposed to the enthusiastic embrace of her mother and sister, betray the cold, hard facts of life for a bold and bright young woman in a repressive society.
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