There Is No Evil (2020)

Mohammad Rasoulof made this film while banned from filmmaking and barred from leaving Iran, and that defiance is woven into every frame. There Is No Evil is an anthology of four secretly shot stories, each centred on capital punishment but each told in a different register: domestic drama, thriller, romance, and a tale that crosses borders. Together they form a major work of recent Iranian cinema and a testament to those living under oppression.

What makes the film so powerful is its refusal to reduce executioners to simple villains. The system strips people of their ability to choose, yet Rasoulof insists that the power to refuse orders still exists, and that is where the moral weight falls. A sequence set to the Italian anti-fascist song Bella Ciao is at once hopeful and deeply melancholy, one of the most striking moments in any film from that year.

The comparisons to Kieslowski’s Dekalog and Malick’s A Hidden Life feel earned. Like those works, There Is No Evil examines what state violence does to the soul, and it does so with the quiet fury of a filmmaker who has lived the consequences firsthand.