ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ

Released to coincide with the 2006 football World Cup for which Iran has qualified, Offside is a vibrant, bitter-sweet work from writer/director Jafar Panahi (The Circle, Crimson Gold). Shot on hand-held digital video cameras with a fly-on-the-wall immediacy and engagingly acted by a non-professional cast, it follows the efforts of various unnamed teenage girls to sneak into a crucial international qualifying game at Tehran's Azadi stadium, in a country where women are forbidden from attending soccer matches.

Despite the title, we don't see any on-pitch action in Offside, although we are conscious of the crowd's roars, groans, and chants. And these are the sounds heard by a half-a-dozen female supporters, who are detained by conscript soldiers and who are taken to a holding pen at the ground. There the adolescents, including one who has bravely dressed up in military garb, verbally run rings around their provincial captors, pointing out the contradictions of a system which allows women to play football and attend the cinema but not to attend a sporting contest.

"ABSURDLY AMUSING"

Offside recalls the best work of Ken Loach, in that the humour and the social critique emerge from the predicaments of the characters. One absurdly amusing sequence sees a girl being escorted to the mens' toilets with a poster over her face, lest she read any graffiti, and then her male escort haplessly attempting to keep the room clear of exuberant fans. The closing footage however of the joyful, real-life celebrations of both sexes on the streets of the capital offers a measure of hope for Iran's future.