Movie Reviews: Circumstance Thrills, Brighton Rock Doesn’t Rock

Sarah Kazemy, left, with Nikohl Boosheri in Circumstance. One of the most thrilling directorial debuts of this year, Maryam Keshavarz’s Circumstance is an edge-of-your-seat thriller with silk-sheet sex; a soap-operatic family melodrama with double-crossing siblings; and an exploration of the power of the state in the private sphere. Oh, and it’s set in Iran. But it wasn’t shot there. In Iran.