Sahar Dolatshahi in Inversion

MAKE sure you catch Inversion, the latest Iranian film to find a wide international following.

Director Behnam Behzadi uses the backdrop of Tehran’s air pollution as the starting point for a story about love, family and societal pressures.

Niloofar (Sahar Dolatshahi) works in her tailor’s shop and lives with her ageing mother. One day, when the air quality is so bad her mother is struggling to breathe, doctors say she must leave Tehran and head to the countryside.

Niloofar is told by her siblings she too must go and look after her mother – but they do not know she is secretly falling in love and, at 35, is torn between her responsibility towards her family and wanting to make her own decisions.

Behzadi says the pollution in Tehran is such that it has become a deadly fact of life. Some days a situation called “thermal inversion”, where warm air above traps cold air below, means the smog can’t escape – and has awful effects on the people living there.

“Tehran is one of the most polluted cities in the world, and the pollution reaches its peak on the days when there is thermal inversion. On such days, the situation becomes critical and it is even hard to breathe,” he says.

“We all notice the air pollution only on such days but we forget it after a few days. In fact, we don’t forget it, we get used to it.”

Iranian cinema has in recent years found a wide audience and Inversion joins the ranks of such celebrated films as Offside, This Is Not A Film and A Separation.