Many recent Iranian films are about the Iran-Iraq War, which lasted from 1980 to 1988, claimed a million lives and, as journalist Robert Fisk noted, "touched every family in both countries."
Despite state control of the Iranian media, not all these films are straight propaganda, as Ensieh Shah-Hosseini's "Goodbye, Life" illustrates.
Screened at this year's Fukuoka International Film Festival and scheduled to play at more festivals in Europe and the United States, "Goodbye, Life" has plenty of bloodshed but little in the way of conventional heroics. Instead, it presents the chaos of battle, the resilience of the noncombatants, the humanity of the enemy and the personal growth of the heroine -- a young woman who comes to the front posing as a journalist, with the intent of finding an "honorable" death. Her real aim: suicide.