A suspenseful tale of love and family upended by obsession and suspicion, CIRCUMSTANCE is also a provocative coming-of-age story that cracks open the hidden, underground world of Iranian youth culture, where a young woman’s most electrifying passions can become the most dangerous of secrets. It tells the story of two vivacious young girls — wealthy Atafeh and orphaned Shireen — discovering their burgeoning sexuality and, like 16- year-old girls anywhere, struggling with their desires and the boundaries placed upon them by the world they were born into.

The Audience Award winner at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, writer-director Maryam Keshavarz’s debut feature boldly takes filmgoers inside a modern Iran rarely witnessed by outsiders: an exhilarating, invisible realm of illicit parties where young hipsters risk arrest, and their futures, as they experiment with sex, drugs and defiance, all while trying to evade the authorities.