The Suitors - Die Freier (1989)

Synopsis

Iranian businessman Haji returns to Manhattan with his new bride, Mariyam. Haji's friends plan a feast to celebrate the marriage in the traditional style, which includes a slaughtered lamb.

Lamb's blood from the messy ritual dripping into the apartment below causes a suspicious neighbor to call the police.

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When Haji is killed in the ensuing police intervention, the widow Mariyam is wooed by Haji's friends. Sensing Mariyam's reluctance, Mohammed acts quickly to propose marriage with tragi-comedic consequences.

The debut feature by Iranian-born NYU grad Ghasem Ebrahimian marked the emergence of an original new talent with an offbeat (to say the least) sense of humor.

His story follows the emancipation of a young, subservient Moslem woman from her strict religious upbringing, after she finds herself suddenly widowed and cast adrift in New York City.

Four of her dead husband's friends each begin courting her, with all due respect for ceremony but also with the unspoken expectation that she will abide by her customs and accept a new husband.

How she eventually wins her independence is even more surprising than how she became a widow in the first place, after a bizarre accident involving a slaughtered lamb in a tenement bathtub and a trigger-happy SWAT team.

The non-professional cast offers several natural, unrehearsed performances, and the surprise ending offers a perfect metaphor of how, in some cultures, women are regarded as only so much baggage. -- IMDb

Cast: Pouran Esrafily, Ali Azizian, Shahab Navab, Assurbanipal Babila, Bahman Maghsoudlou ...

Read about this film

Country: United States
Language: English | Persian
Color: Color
Runtime: 106 min.