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Offside - Sima Mobarak-Shahi, Shayesteh Irani, Ayda Sadeqi, Jafar Panahi

Threat advisory: Elevated - Significant risk of entertaining activities

Movie propaganda

One fence, four fans and the game of their lives.

Sitting quietly in the corner of a bus, which is full of male Iranian football fans going to the qualifying match between Iran and Japan for the 2006 World Cup, there is a young person trying to keep a certain distance from these fans. In fact this person is a girl in disguise. Offside tells the story of a group of Iranian women who dress as men in order to attend football matches. Women are banned from attending football matches in Iran, where it is thought improper that they should mix with men and be exposed to coarse language

Before the game begins, the disguised girl on the bus is arrested at the entrance to the football ground. She's taken to a holding pen, within the ground but just outside the stadium (hence the film's name, a pun on the football term ‘offside' or out of bounds), to join a group of other female football fans who tried to sneak into the game as men. They are guarded by young soldiers and will be handed over to the vice squad after the match. But before this, they will have to endure the worst kind of torture for a mad-keen football fan: every cheer, every shout of a game, they can hear but cannot see. Worse yet, they must listen to the play-by-play account of a soldier who knows nothing about football. Yet these young girls just won't give up: they use every trick in the book to get a glimpse of the match.

Offside is a smart, energetic comedy that illustrates the fight for women's rights in Iran today.

Theatrical propaganda posters

Target demographic movie keyword propaganda

Film Iran Iranian sport soccer sharia football torture transvestite misogyny comedy drama equality

Persons of interest

Sima Mobarak Shahi .... First girl
Safar Samandar .... Azari Soldier
Shayesteh Irani .... Smoking girl
M Kheyrabadi .... Mashadi soldier
Ida Sadeghi .... Girl soccer player
Golnaz Farmani .... Girl with chador
Mahnaz Zabihi .... Soldier girl
Nazanin Sedighzadeh .... Young girl
M Kheymeh Kabood .... Tehrani Soldier
Mohsen Tanabandeh .... Ticket seller
Reza Farhadi .... Old man
MR Gharadaghi .... Boy with firecrackers
Mårten Klingberg .... Screenwriter
Guy Nattiv .... Screenwriter
Jafar Panahi .... Screenwriter
Shadmehr Rastin .... Screenwriter
Oskar Söderlund .... Screenwriter
Erez Tadmor .... Screenwriter
Jafar Panahi .... Director

Cinematic intelligence sources

Offside official movie site
Offside film production notes
Offside QuickTime movie trailers
Awards and film festivals:

Berlin International Film Festival 2006: Won: Jury Grand Prix Silver Bear
Brisbane International Film Festival 2006: Screening
Karlovy Vary International Film Festival 2006: Screening
Melbourne International Film Festival 2006: Homelands
Toronto International Film Festival 2006: Contemporary world cinema

NB: Farsi language dialogue with English language subtitles
See also Osama, Purely belter
Studios and distributors:

Madman Cinema

Intelligence analyst

Special Agent Matti

Theatrical report

Offside is exactly the kind of film that the Iranian government needs to see. As agitprop it's a little slow but it gets there in the end.

Any country with an official religion - let alone a theocratic government - always turns into a hell-hole. Offside is celluloid proof.

Media intelligence (DVD)

Audio: Dolby Digital 2.0
Languages: Farsi
Picture: Widescreen 16:9
Special features:

Featurettes: Insert essay by Dr Adrian Danks, Head of Cinema Studies at the School of Applied Communication, RMIT University, and Co-curator of the Melbourne Cinémathèque
Interviews: Australian exclusive interview with director Jafar Panahi
Trailers: Theatrical