Desert Dancer

At first, Desert Dancer can feel like a camel ride that sends you jolting and bruising over every uneven storyline. Based on the true story of Afshin Ghaffarian, an Iranian underground-dancer-turned-political-refugee, the biopic (rated PG-13 for thematic elements, some drug material, and violence) seems to oversentimentalize every emotion and over-chew every theme. But think of it as a theatrical dance performance instead, in which those exaggerated clenched fists and gritted teeth are raw, ripped-out expressions of the soul’s muted whispers—and the flaws become forgivable.

Afshin (Reece Ritchie) was born into a country that birthed great poetry but unfortunately also into a post–Iranian Revolution era: The ruling Islamic Republic enforces strict moral codes that include discouraging all forms of dance. Dance-crazy even as a boy, Afshin sneaks home bootlegged DVD copies of Dirty Dancing and suffers lashes from his teacher for popping and locking in class.

In 2009, Afshin enters university in Tehran and forms an underground dance troupe with three idealistic friends (Tom Cullen, Marama Corlett, Bamshad Abedi-Amin) and a heroin-addicted daughter of a former Tehran Ballet Company star (Freida Pinto). This was the year of the Iranian Green Movement, a wave of pro-democracy, pro-reform protests that the government violently repressed. But Desert Dancer is more about artistic passion than political polemics.

While his friends bypass Iran’s firewall to access YouTube videos of political rants, Afshin gets pumped up over videos of pirouettes, the twist, and modern dance. And within the fizz of fear, anger, and frustration, Afshin unleashes those emotions through dance and sweat.

The best dance sequence is in the movie’s title: the desert dance. Afshin’s group stages its first performance for 20 trusted friends in the Iranian desert, far away from the regime’s authoritarian tentacles. Their riveting choreography—the trembling fingertips, arching back, swaying wrists, and stomping limbs—fleshes out the metaphors of life and death by melding into the natural elements of the harsh sun, sloping dunes, and spraying sand.

In that vast, barren environment, Afshin and his friends quench their thirst for freedom—to create, anguish, and communicate—while their audience sits raptured by the message within their wordless movements.

It’s a beautiful, stunning, tragic performance. For these desert dancers, their bodies uncaged previously unspeakable voices—but it’s still a restricted, temporary taste of true freedom.