The Sealed Soil

The earliest complete surviving feature film directed by an Iranian woman, Marva Nabili’s The Sealed Soil chronicles a young woman’s resistance to her forced marriage, a rebellion quickly misinterpreted by her family as demonic possession. Breathtaking in its directorial sophistication and restraint, and unblinking in its critique of institutionalized misogyny, this is a too-long-underseen masterstroke of world cinema. An Arbelos/Venera Films co-release.