No, Cyndi Lauper’s feminist feel-good anthem “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” isn’t necessarily the first song that comes to mind when talking about an Iranian family. And yet, in THE PERSIAN VERSION, that ’80s classic is a symbol of cross-cultural understanding and cross-generational reconciliation. And those are things that Leila desperately needs. Born to Iranian parents who immigrated to the United States in the 1960s, she’s been subjected to a wide variety of influences from an early age — influences that are not necessarily compatible with each other. The protagonist describes it as being like a child of divorce, caught between two parents who are practically at war with each other. This sounds serious, but she describes it with a lot of irony. A little later, in a flashback to her childhood, we see her dancing to Lauper’s song, accompanied by numerous other people who have spontaneously come together. A touch of Bollywood enters Iran when the family visits the land of its origin and national borders are suddenly very far from anyone’s mind.

This can all be rather dizzying. Director Maryam Keshavarz, herself a US citizen born to Iranian parents, sets a tremendous pace right from the start of this, her third feature film. Along with her alter ego, aspiring filmmaker Leila, she hurtles through life, in the one country, then in the other, skipping through time and sometimes breaking the fourth wall. On its face, THE PERSIAN VERSION appears to focus mainly on the humorous aspect of balancing these identities: a classic culture-clash comedy, albeit with a lot of energy and the courage to play with directorial gimmicks. But that’s only half of the truth. Or rather, it is one of several truths that the filmmaker weaves together. This is “a true story”, a title card informs us at the start — only to be followed by “sort of”.

Leila remains the one who proclaims these truths, but with an eye to her family. Above all, the story of her mother, Shirin, becomes a real affair of the heart. She, too, was once a young woman with her own desires and dreams, which her daughter has no idea of. In this way, THE PERSIAN VERSION reveals itself to be a cross-generational portrait. The protagonist takes the audience on a journey of discovery which ends with nothing being the way it used to be. Not even Leila herself. This earned the tragicomedy a standing ovation and an audience award at its world premiere at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. As headstrong as the people we meet here are, that’s how playful and self-confident the production is. When it’s over, you feel like you’ve become part of this motley crew yourself.

That said, this film is not really a feel-good movie that buries everything beneath a sugar coating. In fact, this turbulent family saga can even be really bitter when life trips up the protagonists. Over and over, silence is used as a means of confronting trauma and maintaining control of a situation. Everything is all the more beautiful when the lost voice is found again. When the characters come together a second time at the end to perform their very own version of “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” — this time in a “Persian version” — we’re allowed to think that everything will be all right, that the world can be a place where everyone and everything will come together, West and East, past and present, where cultures complement each other instead of excluding each other, and also that the differences between the sexes are no longer as important. That maybe we should dance in the streets more often, with our family and friends, with strangers, wherever they may come from, and just see where we end up.