Educational Media Reviews Online

Starless Dreams is the final film in Mehrdad Oskouei’s Youth Behind Bars trilogy, a series of documentaries that looks at the juvenile justice system in Iran. Like the earlier installments in the trilogy (It’s Always Late for Freedom and The Last Days of Winter, which focus on male juvenile offenders), Oskouei uses a combination of direct interviews with inmates along with footage of everyday interactions among the young women to give viewers a glimpse into their troubled worlds. Although their stories echo many of the same themes that are seen in the earlier films (drugs, violence, and abusive home environments, often leading to life on the streets), the young women’s stories in Starless Dreams exhibit additional layers of complexity precisely because they are women’s stories, told by the women who have lived them. As such, the film engages issues of human rights and Iranian societal expectations in ways that the other films do not.

As an interviewer, Oskouei is adept at getting the young women to open up about their lives. His interviewing technique never comes across as intrusive, and the focus remains clearly on the women at all times. Several of the women’s confessional statements (“I’m not as tough as I sound, it’s just an act,” or “The pain drips from the walls”) are jarring in both their honesty and their sadness.

Starless Dreams is the strongest film in the Youth Behind Bars trilogy. It would be appropriate for courses in criminal justice, sociology, political science, or gender studies, and it would be particularly effective if paired with It’s Always Late for Freedom, or with a film on female juvenile offenders from a different cultural perspective.