Until Tomorrow (Ta Farda) from writer/director Ali Asgari and his co-writer Alireza Khatami tells the story of a single mother desperate to hide her illegitimate child (a 2-month old baby) from her parents when they unexpectedly come to stay with her in Tehran.
In Until Tomorrow, after Fereshteh (played by Sadaf Asgari) is unable to convince her parents not to come to stay with her in Tehran, she must find a way to hide her newborn daughter and her possessions before their arrival until their departure the next day (thus the title). What follows is an odyssey that shows how limited the options are for young women in society. While the film uses Tehran and Iran as the specific lens, the message resonates universally. Even as she dreams of getting to the US, where she believes she’ll have more freedom, she knows even in Alaska someone could still report back on her to her family.
Like any odyssey, it begins mostly as an inconvenience, but then as things start to go wrong and pile up, and the journey extends/becomes more desperate, the weight of the journey both on Fereshteh and the audience grows.
In these odyssey-type narratives, there are two categories. Those that go it alone, and those that journey with others. While Fereshteh begins and ends her journey independently (save for her baby), she is accompanied for the majority of her journey by a faithful friend Atefeh (played by Ghazal Shojaei). Who, like Samwise Gamgee, is willing to pick up the weight of the ring for her friend. Atefeh, vacillating between optimism about their plans, to protectiveness with Fereshteh’s ex, and cunning offers at times much-needed lightness in the otherwise progressively hopeless unraveling of Fereshteh’s plan to hide her child.
When Atefeh is first introduced, she berates Fereshteh for leaving the baby alone to take bags of baby stuff to another resident’s apartment to hide when she should’ve waited for Atefah to arrive so the baby wouldn’t be alone. Atefah then proceeds to help Fereshteh move other items to that apartment and the roof, all while leaving the baby alone. This short sequence did a great way of setting up their dynamic. Atefah might vocalize things as right or wrong, but at the end of the day, she defers to Fereshteh’s necessities/needs. It also showed the core of her support for Fereshteh.
The ending felt inevitable after a certain point. Perhaps that means the film went a little long, and one of her journey’s legs should’ve been exercised in favour of story economy. But each leg cast further commentary on the failings of society and the difficulties people face when seeking change. Especially when they’re forced to do so from the shadows.
Fereshteh lies to many people about why she needs to move stuff from her apartment. She lies or doesn’t give a reason for why she needs to have her baby stay elsewhere for the night. Most viewers, especially female viewers, probably innately know why she’s lying. But, if there was any lack of clarity, it is obliterated during the scenes at the hospital.
One thing I really enjoyed about the film is that it didn’t portray all men as villains and all women as allies. In fact, sometimes the female characters were more willing to uphold the societal patriarchy than their male counterparts.
Until Tomorrow premiered at the 72nd annual Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale) as part of the Panorama section.