Iraj Karimi makes his feature film debut with the smart, funny, and multilayered Going By, a road movie par excellence. As passengers of four cars travel from Tehran to the same northern Caspian seaside resort, we witness the unfolding of individual stories in each car and their intersections. Karimi shows a deft touch as he keeps clashing emotional tones in perfect balance throughout the film with interesting situations, sharp dialogues, and an excellent cast of characters: an existential hearse driver (played wonderfully by Mehran Rajabi), a taboo-defying depiction of a woman and her late husband's pregnant mistress, a single father and his two sons, and another single father and his terminally ill son. Karimi, a well-known Iranian film critic, also adds a playful self-reflexive layer to the film, foreshadowing its name-that-reference quality. From Abbas Kiarostami's epics and shorts to popular women's melodramas, everything is fair game in Going By.