TAR
TAR is a powerful and thought-provoking exploration of cross-cultural drama, told through personal and intimate perspectives. A love story, adventure, and tragedy in the tradition of Doctor Zhivago, with echoes of Gandhi, the film follows Roxanna, a young American woman who is manipulated and lied to by her Iranian boyfriend, Hussein, an anti-Shah underground leftist activist and UCLA student, into traveling to Iran in search of her lost Iranian father just to be used for their struggle against the late Shah.
Roxanna’s life is turned upside down after she unknowingly plants a bomb that kills many, including children. As the entire country hunts for her, she must navigate the chaos, challenging both the government and the anti-government forces, fighting for her own life while continuing her search for her father.
Throughout her harrowing journey, Roxanna finds hope as Cyrus, a poet, writer and filmmaker and best friend and high school classmate of Hussein, enters her life. Cyrus abandoned fame and fortune to help and save her life to a point that her journey becomes his.
Along the way, Roxanna encounters Dorian, a middle-aged American and seasoned CIA agent with a tangled past. Dorian had played a pivotal role in orchestrating the 1979 Iranian Revolution that replaced the Shah with Ayatollah Khomeini, who we now know as President Carter said, he was an English spay.
Meeting Roxanna forces Dorian to confront her own past. She begins to feel a profound empathy for Roxanna, seeing in her a reflection of Katrina Beheshti—the daughter Dorian bore in secret, unknown to Ayatollah Beheshti who was supposed to replace Khamenei. This revelation intensifies Dorian’s internal conflict as she wrestles with a harrowing choice: follow her orders to eliminate Roxanna or help her escape the mounting threats that surround her.
Just when life turns perilous and Cyrus is forced into exile in America, leaving Roxanna defenseless, Peter—an American priest and Cyrus’s closest friend—steps in to shelter her. Peter came to Iran as a missionary but fell in love with an Iranian gypsy woman. He ultimately left the church, embraced a nomadic life inspired by Omar Khayyam, and became a gypsy himself.
Desperate to reconnect with her long-lost and mysterious father, Assad, Roxanna risks everything in her search for the truth. What she discovers is shocking: Assad was once a trusted adviser to Ayatollah Khomeini. This revelation makes Roxanna a dangerous liability—one that powerful forces are determined to silence. However, after Assad unknowingly becomes involved in a bombing that kills children, the government confiscates his passport, leaving him trapped in Iran with no way out.
Amid the mounting chaos and danger, Peter sacrifices his life to save Roxanna. When Cyrus learns of Peter’s brutal killing by regime forces, he secretly returns to Iran. Determined to help Roxanna and Assad, he devises a daring plan to escape the country under Khamenei’s oppressive rule.
Roxanna and Cyrus find love in one another. Their love is deep and unwavering, yet forbidden, forged in secrecy and shadow. In the end, one of them must make the ultimate sacrifice, giving their life so the other may live.
