Even though it’s two hours long, there isn’t a minute wasted in this taut thriller that shines a light on the precariousness of being a woman in Iran.

Rahimi (Zar Amir-Ebrahimi) is a journalist who travels to Mashhad, a city deemed holy as it has relics of a beloved Imam, keen to report on a killer who has been targeting prostitutes. We can see what sort of society it is when she checks into her hotel and is nearly refused a room as she’s female, unmarried and travelling alone.

We find out who the killer is early on. He’s ex-military family man Saeed (Mehdi Bajestani) who sees the murders as his holy duty to cleanse the city of corrupt women. He longs for his army days where he was a hero and envies the men who were martyred. There are some signs that maybe his hold on reality is not all that secure.

Ali Abbasi (who directed the very tonally different Border (2018)) keeps the tension up in the first half as we watch Rahimi get closer to identifying the killer. He doesn’t shy away from showing the murders, something that is hard to watch, particularly as we are given some insight into the lives of the women. It’s not a trope that I enjoy but there is a sense that the graphic scenes are justified by the end.

We also see Rahimi coming up against the same patriarchal disapproval and even violence from men with power who judge her because of rumours spread by other men. This really is the heart of the narrative and it’s a bleak one, though ameliorated by Rahimi’s (and Amir-Ebrahimi’s) dogged courage and gumption. Amir-Ebrahimi won the Best Actress award at Cannes for this role.

The last half is set within the legal system where support for Saeed and his ‘holy jihad against corruption’ might see him get away with it – there is irony in the talk of corrupt women when so many systems are riddled with corruption. It’s an element that resonates – you can see it happening around us and particularly in the US – where you dehumanise a class, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation and then any discrimination or violence can be justified.

The final two scenes are crackingly good, serving us an interpretation of Saeed and his culpability as well as chillingly signalling what the future might look like.

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Have you seen this film? Let me know your thoughts.