“The Persian Version”, which won the Audience Award when it was premiered at the US Dramatic Competition of the Sundance Film Festival early in last year (It also received the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award, by the way), is funny, charming, and touching as cheerfully bouncing around its young Iranian American heroine and her immigrant family story. Mainly driven by the mother and daughter relationship at its center, the movie presents the story and characters with an ample amount of humor and care, and the result will alternatively amuse and move you a lot.

At first, we get to know about how it was often difficult for Leila (Layla Mohammadi) to grow up in her Iranian immigrant family during the 1980s. Around the time her parents moved to US from their country in the 1970s, things were mostly okay between US and Iran, but then these two countries became quite hostile to each other due to the revolution in Iran several years later, so young Leila often struggled between her two cultural identities as shown from one amusing moment early in the film.

In the early 2000s, Leila has lived independently now as your average young New Yorker, but things are still difficult for her. As a young aspiring filmmaker, she is not going anywhere as struggling to finish her new screenplay, which is incidentally based on her family story. In addition, her mother Shireen (Niousha Noor) remains not so pleased about Leila’s homosexuality – even after Leila married and then divorced some woman. When Shireen’s ailing husband finally receives a heart transplant surgery, nearly all of their children come together for support, but Shireen prefers not to be around Leila, so Lelia goes to their family home instead for taking care of her grandmother, who has no problem at all with her granddaughter being a lesbian.

Meanwhile, we also get to know about an unexpected happening in Lelia’s private life. During one Halloween party, she comes across a guy in a drag costume, and she comes to have a little hot night along with this dude, who happens to be the lead performer of the latest Broadway revival of “Hedwig and the Angry Inch”. It seemed to both of them that this is just a quick and simple moment of desire which will be forgotten sooner or later, but, what do you know, Leila is caught off guard when she is notified a few months later that she is actually pregnant.

 While eventually deciding that she will have a baby without marrying that dude, Leila comes to learn from her grandmother that there is a little secret behind her mother, and she soon became quite curious about what happened to her mother before she came to US along with her husband. As shown from a series of flashback scenes, she and her mother were not particularly close to each other, but she really wants to know more about her mother’s secret because it may anchor her screenplay as the emotional core of the story.

As Shireen’s hidden past is gradually unfolded along Lelia’s ongoing narrative, the screenplay by director/writer/co-producer Maryam Keshavarz freely swings back and forth between comedy and drama along with more character development. We come to admire and respect Shireen more as observing more of her sheer determination which has steadily carried her family during all those years. We also come to see that, as Leila’s grandmother points out early in the story, Leila is actually not so different from Shireen in many aspects. A number of scenes between Leila and her grandmother are constantly warm and sweet, and the movie also pays some attention to Leila’s sick father, who was not a very good husband to his wife but tried his best for his family anyway before getting too ill to work.  

In case of Leila’s eight older brothers, they are depicted with each own personality instead of becoming mere background details. Even though you cannot remember all of their respective names, they are often distinguishable from each other even when they are together on the screen, and it is certainly nice to see how all of them show unconditional care and support to their younger sister just like their grandmother.  

Keshavarz draws good performance from her main cast members. While Layla Mohammadi and Niousha Noor are believable in the long and complicated personal history between their characters, and their solid performances are flawlessly connected with Chiara Stella and Kamand Shafieisabet, who respectively played young Leila and young Shireen. Bijan Daneshmand, Bella Warda, and Tom Byrne are also well-cast in their supporting parts, and Byrne is hilariously awkward when his character is invited to join a family dinner as the biological father of Lelia’s baby.

In conclusion, “The Persian Version” is an endearing mix of coming-of-age comedy and immigrant family drama, and its vibrant charm and spirit still linger on my mind. Although I have not watched her two previous feature films “Circumstance” (2011) and “Viper Club” (2018), I can clearly discern here that Keshavarz is another talented filmmaker to watch, and it will be interesting to what she will do next after this little wonderful film which deserves to be cherished more in my inconsequential opinion. In short, this is one of more notable works of last year, and I sincerely recommend you to check it out as soon as possible.