Seven Days Film Review: Uneven But Empowering

Seven Days is an impressive testament to activist Narges Mohammadi, but the unbalanced screenplay and direction notably robs it of power.

The choice is clearly extremely, incomprehensibly difficult, but for Maryam (Vishka Asayesh, No Men Allowed), her commitment to the cause and her family are inextricably linked.

The film’s title of Seven Days refers to the week’s leave from prison that Maryam is granted. Picked up by her brother (Sina Parvaneh, Holy Spider) and taken to see her mother, Maryam thinks she is visiting her family for just a single week. Her brother, however, has made plans for her escape to Germany, where her family have relocated. For many, this chance at a new life as opposed to an indefinite stay in prison would be grabbed without hesitation. The positioning of this choice—essentially family versus revolution—is an interesting one, especially as the two continually intertwine.

Mohammad Rasoulof’s (The Seed of the Sacred Fig) screenplay effectively portrays this harsh decision that Maryam is faced with, and the earlier stages of Seven Days, which shows Maryam’s risky and secretive trip through the Iranian countryside, are tense and terrifying in all the ways they should be. They carry the same dramatic fear as the documentary Beyond Utopia (2023); both expertly show the difficult and dangerous lengths normal citizens go to in order to escape authoritarian regimes. Surprisingly, Rasoulof’s screenplay for Seven Days is less sure in its last act, when Maryam is actually with her family.

These more domestic-based scenes feel both overwritten in their drama and dialogue—often veering into jarring melodrama—and underwritten in their characters, contributing to a strangely generic climax. Maryam is, as the main character, the most well-rounded and developed of the family quartet, but the husband and two children are not given enough to allow their relationships with Maryam to flesh out. The briskness of these scenes also feel at odds with the careful family drama that Seven Days is trying to tell. 

Similarly to Rasoulof, director Ali Samadi Ahadi (The Green Wave) seems less assured during these domestic scenes—his shaky camerawork gives them an odd cheapness—but more comfortable in the scenes when Maryam is transported to see her family. Wide shots of the Iranian countryside mirror the starkness of the choice Maryam faces, and the dramatic darkness of the nighttime transportation clearly shows the precarious and risky situation at hand. Again, this time in the form of Mathias Neumann’s cinematography, Seven Days is both excellent and disappointingly generic.

At the heart of every scene is Asayesh, who gives a luminous, layered performance that embodies the fiery spirit—both as an activist and mother—of Narges Mohammadi. Via Maryam, she constantly reminds us of the need for the fight to continue, at whatever cost. Maryam leaving the country is exactly what the Iranian government wants. Asayeh’s range of emotions that she shows, from happiness at time spent with her family to excruciating agony at the decision she needs to make, is spectacular. Asayesh represents the emotional core and unerring fight at the heart of Seven Days, and in turn, of Iranians fighting for their basic rights and freedoms.

Seven Days was screened at TIFF on September 7, 2024. Read our list of films to watch at the 2024 Toronto Film Festival!