Mantagheye bohrani

Critical Zone is a surreal and provocative movie exploring the life of a drug dealer called Amir in night-time Tehran. He's no ordinary drug dealer as he seems to give away a lot of product to those in discomfort and promotes the healing properties of hashish with sincerity, even more he seems to be appreciated as some sort of community medic.

There are strange and unusual elements to the film that are never really explained, but add to an uncanny atmosphere. Things that seem off include a car GPS system that might be sentient, and a highly organized drug network meeting in tunnels at the start of the movie. Every single scene seems calculated to annoy the Iranian authorities as much as possible, and to feed their paranoia, including scenes where Amir hands out blunts to transexual prostitutes and another where Amir's dog humps his leg. Dogs are seen as unclean in Islamic scripture and it is currently illegal to walk them or ride with them in cars, with legislators exploring how to make dog ownership illegal.

There is one major scene of ultra-provocation, when Amir meets up with a flight attendant and they proceed to indulge in a laundry list of vices. I felt a learned a lot about freedom from that scene, because of the sheer authenticity of the actress's performance, of her electrifying defiance.