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Friendly Persuasion
The New York Post
by Jonathan Foreman

Politically repressive societies can produce wonderful art when their repression begins to loosen, but artists are still forced to code their political views and messages. So it's not such a surprise that so many superb films have come out of Iran in the last few years, nor that so many of them tell stories that focus on children.

This strangely titled documentary, written and directed by Jamsheed Akrami, surveys Iranian cinema since the 1979 revolution and features interviews with such leading filmmakers as Abbas Kiarostami, Jafar Panahi, Majid Majidi, Mohsen Makhmalbaf and Tahmineh Milani,who made the defiantly feminist "Two Women."

I was pleased by the forthright defense in "Friendly Persuasion" of Iranian cinema's use of children. After all, it's amazing to see kids treated realistically rather than, in the modern American style, as smart-aleck miniature adults or wise little angels.

Running time: 100 minutes. Not rated (nothing objectionable). At the Screening Room, as part of a retrospective called "Iran Through the Eyes of Children."