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Review | There Is No Evil movie review: Iranian death-penalty drama considers impact on the executioners

  • In four loosely connected vignettes, Mohammad Rasoulof, who was previously jailed, examines the impact of the death penalty on those who administer it in Iran
  • Like Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Three Colours: Red, the final section draws together what’s gone before, narratively and thematically

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Ehsan Mirhosseini in a still from There Is No Evil (category: IIA, Persian), directed by Mohammad Rasoulof. Kaveh Ahangar and Baran Rasoulof co-star.
James Mottram

4/5 stars

In 2017, Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof returned home after the Cannes Film Festival premiere of his movie A Man of Integrity. Not only was he sentenced by the authorities to one year in prison, but he was banned from filmmaking for life.

Some may have wilted under such conditions, but not Rasoulof. His new film, There Is No Evil, the making of which risked incurring further punishment for ignoring the ban, strongly critiques the government that imprisoned him.

This anthology drama won the Golden Bear at the 2020 Berlin film festival in Germany, and that’s the least it deserves. A rigorous examination of the death penalty in Iran, and those who administer it, it’s a deft and determined piece of work.

Think of it as a series of four loosely connected vignettes that switches gears and genres over its two-and-a-half-hour running time but rarely stumbles.

The first 30 minutes could be an entirely different film, as middle-aged family man Heshmat (Ehsan Mirhosseini) goes about his business, taking his daughter to the supermarket and tending to his aged mother.

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