Writer: Mohammad Ali Hosseini
Director: Hesam Farahmand
This Iranian film, showing at this year’s Raindance, explores the desperate measures that poverty can induce people to take. Raha is the daughter of the title, and she sells her hair so that she can afford a laptop, albeit a second-hand one. However, this act sets up a horrifying chain of events, a chain that director Hesam Farahmand unpicks with aplomb.
Raha is at university studying animation. Her Apple Mac is vital to her studies and the project she is working on, but as the deadline looms, it is stolen. Her family doesn’t have enough money to buy a new one, and fluctuating international currency exchange rates have led to businesses withdrawing instalment purchases. Raha’s father promises his daughter that he will buy her a computer somehow.
But since witnessing a fatal accident as a Metro train driver, Tohid is unemployed. He makes ends meet by buying broken electrical goods from flea markets in the hope that once he’s repaired them, he can sell them on for profit. Unfortunately, he’s a lousy repairman and is never able to fix anything. The film’s few moments of humour come from dodgy coffee makers and overenthusiastic toasters.
Tohid, played marvellously by Shahab Hosseini, is a kind of Ken Loach hero, a man who tries to do the right thing, but always finds himself sinking deeper into trouble. And like many of Loach’s films, there is no music, underlining the realist nature of Farahmand’s study of modern-day Iran, where the rich and the poor meet in uneasy circumstances. Nevertheless, My Daughter’s Hair is not as drab as, say, a film like I, Daniel Blake. Farahmand’s colour palette is a little brighter; the blue walls of Raha’s bedroom, the red of Tohid’s blood as it washes into a drain.
The sequence of events could be too much even for a soap opera, but Farahmand’s steady hand ensures that the audience doesn’t really question some of the more dramatic moments, and he holds back on certain scenes so that they have more of an impact later. The film often runs like a superior police procedural narrative, and it’s fascinating to see how the Iranian police force brings both the accused and the accuser into the interview rooms. This allows for some thrilling dialogue as they go for each other, hammer and tongs.
Although set in Iran, My Daughter’s Hair’s reach is wider, covering more universal themes of mental health, loyalty, and materialism, all stemming from a conventional family, now on its uppers. Delivering performances as good as Hosseini’s are Ghazal Shakeri as Tohid’s wife, Zoha Esmailifar as Raha and Arman Mirzaei as son Soheli, who is about to be called up for conscription. Together, these actors make this desperate story utterly convincing.
My Daughter’s Hair is screening at the Raindance Film Festival 2026 from 17-26 June.
