When Leila, the central character in the new comedy-drama “The Persian Version,” sashays across the Brooklyn Bridge and into a Halloween party carrying a surfboard and wearing a burkini — niqab on top, bikini on the bottom — while Wet Leg’s cheeky anthem “Chaise Longue” plays, it’s clear that what’s to come will be a boundary-pushing take on straddling cultures that are at odds in the real world.
Maryam Keshavarz wore a similar burkini costume once upon a time, and her semi-autobiographical film — which spans decades and moves between Iran and the United States — won an audience award and a screenwriting prize at the Sundance Film Festival in January, where it had its world premiere. The film, written and directed by Keshavarz, will have a limited theatrical release in the United States on Friday.
“The reality is, I’ve never really followed the rules,” Keshavarz, 48, who was born in New York to Iranian parents, told me in a video call earlier this month. “It’s also the reason that probably I’ve been able to get to where I am, because there’s no real path for us, is there? There’s no straight path if you’re an immigrant kid, if you’re queer, if you’re an outsider.”
Keshavarz was an adult when she grasped that immigrants and women could be directors. “I thought that was stuff for white Americans,” she said. “Even the idea that we have a right to tell our story and to take up space is huge.”
