LFF: The Patience Stone (Syngué Sabour)

A beautiful Afghan woman tends to her fighter husband in their bombshelled bedroom. He is comatose, a bullet wound in his neck. The fighting rages outside while she clings desperately to the hope that one day he will wake up and recover consciousness. That is the deceptively simple premise of director Atiq Rahimi’s adaptation of his own bestselling novel The Patience Stone. Appearances, however, are not what they seem. Gradually, we see the wife – an absolutely spectacular performance by Iranian actress Golshifteh Farahani – turn the tables on the patriarchal society she has been born into and use her husband’s condition to her advantage, confounding the various hostile men around her. Finally able to speak openly for the first time, she reveals her deepest secrets and desires, setting the stage for a breathless climax that will leave audiences both shocked and surprised. (Ali Jaafar)