The husband of a woman due to play a match abroad refuses her permission to travel in a fictionalised version of a true story
Permission is a handmaid’s tale taken straight from the headlines. In 2015, Niloufar Ardalan was captain of the Iranian women’s indoor football team, which had just reached the Asian Championships final in Malaysia. Incredibly, she was prevented from playing, because her TV presenter husband would not give her the permission to travel abroad that married women in
Iran legally need.
A fictionalised version of this extraordinary situation, Permission is the debut feature from Iranian dramatist and film-maker Soheil Beiraghi. Baran Kosari plays Afrooz, the player who is turned back at the airport and who then realises that her sporting celebrity and
Instagram following count for nothing. Her cowed teammates won’t support her (they could go on strike, but don’t); her husband Yasser (Amir Jadidi) is a preening TV star who presides over a blandly conformist discussion show, spiteful and petulant about his wife’s greater fame. Team coach Ms Noori (Sahar Dolatshahi) is a reactionary figure, unquestioningly supporting Iran’s patriarchal sports federation who are siding with Yasser.