Women do not experience oppression in exactly the same way and pretending otherwise helps nobody. Where we are born, the laws we live under, religion, family, money and social expectations can make the differences enormous, but across countries and cultures women still find themselves being told what is appropriate for them: how to dress, how to behave, how loudly to speak, how ambitious to be, what to do with their bodies and, far too often, how much discomfort they should simply learn to accept.

For Iranian filmmaker Ghasideh Golmakani, those questions are not theoretical. Born in Tehran, she later studied in Paris, where her PhD examined the struggle for recognition of Iranian women filmmakers before and after the Revolution. Her previous films have dealt with street harassment, child abuse and everyday violence against women, and her first feature, Head to Head, is the work of somebody who has been thinking about these issues for years and has finally found a wonderfully simple way of turning the question around: what would happen if men were made to live, even briefly, with some of the restrictions women are expected to accept? It sounds almost like the set-up for a joke, and sometimes it is very funny.

Bahar (Mehrnoosh Satari) is an Iranian filmmaker making a film of her own, except she has decided that the men appearing in it will wear skirts and headscarves. They must deal with the clothing, the heat, the restrictions on their bodies and the irritation of being told how they may present themselves. Some complain, some become angry and some simply cannot understand why any of this should be necessary; that, of course, is precisely the point. Once the men in Head to Head are placed under comparable restrictions, their frustration comes very quickly.

This is where the black comedy works best, as the men quickly become irritated by the clothes, the heat and the constant rules about what they can and cannot do with their bodies, while women have been dealing with these kinds of restrictions for generations and are so often expected to simply accept them without complaint. Golmakani does not portray these men as bad people, which makes their reactions even more interesting. They have simply never had to think about how they dress, how much of their body is visible or whether the way they move might cause a problem, and suddenly being told what they can and cannot do becomes incredibly annoying to them.

Bahar is not presented as a perfect feminist heroine either, and I liked that about the film, because at times she clearly enjoys watching the men struggle with the very restrictions women have had to live with for years. She can be demanding and provocative, and sometimes she pushes things too far, as though making the men uncomfortable has become almost as important as making them understand why she is doing it in the first place. Golmakani is aware of that contradiction and does not try to hide it, showing how someone who has spent years living with unfair rules can, once given some power, start imposing rules of their own and behaving in ways they would never accept if the situation were reversed.

And yet it is impossible to watch Head to Head without thinking about the reality outside the film. In Iran today, compulsory hijab laws have not disappeared. Women and girls who resist them can still face prosecution, fines and other punishments, while authorities have used measures including vehicle confiscation, business closures and digital surveillance to enforce the rules. The newer Hijab and Chastity law has been suspended rather than repealed, and Human Rights Watch reported in its 2026 assessment that compulsory hijab policies continued to be enforced. Women also remain legally disadvantaged in areas including marriage, divorce, inheritance and child custody.

That context makes the comedy much harder to dismiss once the laughter stops. It is also impossible to separate Golmakani’s film entirely from the Woman, Life, Freedom movement that followed the 2022 death in custody of 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman Zhina Mahsa Amini after her detention by the morality police. Four years later, Amnesty International’s September 2026 investigation concluded that Iranian authorities committed crimes against humanity while suppressing that uprising, including murder, torture, enforced disappearance, imprisonment, rape and persecution on gender and other grounds. Women and girls had been at the forefront of protests against compulsory veiling and wider discrimination. This is why a headscarf in Head to Head cannot remain simply a costume.

At the same time, neither the film nor any serious discussion around it should suggest that the scarf itself is the enemy, although I loved that final moment when Bahar simply lets the scarf go. Many Muslim women choose to wear the hijab as part of their faith, identity or personal life, and that choice deserves exactly the same respect as the decision of another woman not to wear one. The issue is not whether a woman covers her hair; the issue is who gets to decide, and that difference is everything.

Golmakani’s decision to make Head to Head a black comedy instead of making it a purely political drama was a great choice. Iran has given world cinema some extraordinary serious social films, but Golmakani also wants international audiences to see another part of Iranian culture: the humour people use even when talking about extremely difficult things. She describes Iranians as people who joke about their problems, sometimes as a means of coping with them.

Mehrnoosh Satari is very good as Bahar, playing her as a strong and angry woman who can also be difficult at times, and you do not always have to agree with the way she treats the men to understand why she wants them to experience, even briefly, what women have been dealing with for years. Golmakani and cinematographer Amin Jafari also separate Bahar’s film from what is happening behind the camera, using handheld footage for her underground production while the rest of Head to Head is filmed in a calmer, more static way. What I found interesting is how quickly you stop thinking twice about seeing men in headscarves, which is exactly what Golmakani wanted to explore – how easily we can get used to something simply because we see it often enough.

Perhaps that is one of the more uncomfortable points the film makes, because people can get used to almost anything when it does not affect them directly, while women are so often expected to get used to being watched, judged, told what to wear, how to behave and what is acceptable. Of course, the level of restriction is not the same everywhere, but controlling women and their choices is certainly not limited to one country, culture or religion.

That is why the words towards the end of Head to Head were so powerful: “To put men in the everyday situations women face. To see how much they can endure.” Judging by what we have just watched, apparently not very much. Can we give women a break?

Head to Head ought to be watched by men, because perhaps spending some time in the shoes of women who are constantly told what they can wear, how they should behave and what they are allowed to do might make some of them understand what oppression actually feels like. Golmakani has made a great and valuable piece of cinema and perhaps some men will watch it and finally understand why women are so tired of having to fight for things that should never have been decided for us in the first place.

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Written by Maggie Gogler

Featured image courtesy of TIFF

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