Final Rating: 3.5/5
Head to Head is a briskly paced satire of the Iranian media censors. Featuring a film-within-a-film and frank discussions of women’s rights in the Islamic Republic, delivered by actors close to the subject matter, Head to Head is an incisive debut for director Ghasideh Golmakani.
The film stars Mehrnoosh Satari as Bahar, an award-winning Iranian director filming an illegal production with a small cast in secret. The premise of the film involves recreating female-led scenes from classics of Iranian cinema with an all-male cast.
Though lacking women, the cast is directed to follow media censorship guidelines as if they were women, which includes wearing long skirts and headscarves, covering their wrists and bellies, refraining from dancing or swimming, and so forth. To no one’s surprise, direct experience with how the other half lives doesn’t appeal to the men at all.
Meanwhile, the cinematographer Ebi (Ebrahim Azizi) is instructed to keep rolling between takes, and even long after filming has wrapped for the day. His behind-the-scenes footage is usually more interesting than the scenes themselves: in their frustration, the actors begin to reveal their own prejudices, entitlement, and thoughts on Iran’s strict moral laws.
Questions like “why do we have to wear the headscarf?” and “what did we do wrong, we were just dancing?” come up immediately. As Bahar calls cut for seemingly minor infractions like a scarf slipping, or someone walking a touch too fast, the men start to think their director is a ridiculous, overdemanding perfectionist working in service of obscenity laws that would never apply to them anyway. The only alternative would be that those laws she’s citing – the ones that would apply to women – are arbitrarily harsh and specific.
The actor most resistant to Bahar’s demands is Sina (Saeed Naderi), who finally rebels on the last day of shooting by taking off his clothes and going for a swim – both things the censors would never allow a woman to do. Having not lived or worked outside of Iran, Sina takes the behaviours forced on women for granted. He claims that modesty is “part of our religion.” Early on he complains about light-headedness from wearing a scarf, explaining Bahar wouldn’t understand because she’s been “wearing the scarf since [she] was seven.”
Director Gholmakani uses Sina as a kind of audience surrogate. Sina invokes culture, religion, modesty, habit, and history to explain why women must be subject to certain laws, while exempting men, but is rarely able to back up his statements with any substance.
Bahar has heard each excuse before and takes the time to dismantle each with varying degrees of annoyance. As her patience with Sina wanes, so too does her patience with the society which refuses to let her be his equal. Bahar doesn’t mince words about oppression, offering harsh condemnations of the moral police, as well as the filmmakers and citizens that unflinchingly follow their laws. Her most scathing critiques are reserved for those men who see injustice done to women and choose to speak over them, rather than stand in solidarity.
Initially nebulously aimed at “famous Iranian directors,” the words find a more direct target as Ebi and Sina urge Bahar to wear her scarf while with them in public, stating “this is not the time for activism.”
Head to Head is a project clearly close to Gholmakani’s heart, filled with genuine passion and rage. The messaging is obvious, overt even, but thanks to entertaining central performances and quick-witted writing, it’s communicated effectively.
Head to Head was seen during the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival. Thank you to The PR Factory for the screener.
