The Exam
(Emtehan)

Countless women of all ages and from all walks of life come together in the courtyard of a Tehran school to sit for a university entrance exam. The exam is particularly difficult because very few women are allowed to go to university in Iran. From their conversation we are made aware of their daily problems. We are offered a view of Iranian women coming to grips with one of the rare opportunites to achieve parity with men. More or less openly declared conflicts demonstrate that not all women who have got this far can hope to escape the restrictions imposed by a system that very rigidly defines the role of women within the community. Even though the multifarious opinions and ideas expressed by the women also contain progressive and even emancipated or liberal views, for one of the protagonists the entrance exam constitutes an enormous and thankless dilemma in private and family terms.