Writer-director Mohammad Rasoulof has rooted his remarkable career in an aesthetically wide-ranging critique of censorship and authoritarian rule in his native Iran, a project embracing everything from documentary (Head Wind, 2008) to surreal allegory (The White Meadows, SFIFF 2010) to hard-edged realism (Goodbye, SFIFF 2012). That unflinching effort has earned him extensive censorship himself-none of his films can officially screen in Iran-as well as a much-publicized arrest and prison sentence in 2010, simultaneous with that of fellow filmmaker Jafar Panahi. Rasoulof here extends his uncompromising body of work with a taut, finely woven drama based on real-life events. Shot covertly in Iran, the story revolves around two overlapping centers: a desperate father who seeks money for his ailing child through work as a contract killer; and a small circle of aging writers menaced by the secret service, in the person of a powerful agent with much to lose by the threatened publication of certain manuscripts. A cat-and-mouse game ensues against a backdrop of generational amnesia and popular indifference, as brutality overwhelms conscience and despotism haunts the oblivious streets.