Offside (PG, 2007)

A father searches anxiously for his daughter among the buses and cars stopped in traffic en route to Tehran's Azadi Stadium. It's 2006, and, like most Iranians, the girl (Sima Mobarak-Shahi) wants more than anything to see her team play in the World Cup qualifying match against Bahrain. But because she's a girl, she's denied entrance to the stadium by law. So she's sneaking in dressed as a boy, hiding from her father, the police, and the boys on her bus. Nervous about her deception, she is discovered at the front gate of the stadium and then marched to a holding pen located just outside the playing field. Here she and the other female detainees -- along with their guards -- can listen to the match. The girls find that they have a special camaraderie based on a shared sense of outrage at how they're treated (they're not allowed inside, they're told, because they're not allowed to hear men using rowdy language). They're duly impressed when one girl (Mahnaz Zabihi) arrives at the pen in handcuffs -- she was discovered in a captain's box inside the arena, having been nervy enough to steal and wear an officer's uniform. Most of the others wear baggy pants, caps, and Iranian flag-colored face paint to disguise themselves as the very (male) figures who would keep them out.

Like Jafar Panahi's other films, OFFSIDE creates a natural-seeming rhythm, so viewers are soon immersed in a number of experiences. The movie follows a series of characters, most unnamed and all connected by events, desires, and circumstances.

What's most striking about this wonderful film is its celebration of the girls' resilience in the face of such daunting obstacles. Energetic, generous, and full of idealism, they imagine themselves in another world, where they can participate fully in all aspects of their culture, feeling deep national pride (in their soccer team, anyway) even as the nation restrains them. Sharing sadness and joy during a few short hours, the girls -- and a misfit boy arrested for carrying firecrackers -- find hope in each other.