Original Title: Avant la fin de l’été

As light as a feather yet anchored by the melancholy weight of approaching change, Before Summer Ends is the bittersweet chronicle of a single summer in the life of three Iranian students living in France, an utterly unique, beguiling mixture of documentary and fiction in the perennial form of a road movie.

When Hossein and Ashkan learn that their friend Arash has decided to return to Iran, they convince him to take a road trip to the south of France, secretly hoping he will meet a woman and decide not to leave. But their encounter with two young women in a punk rock band does not yield the expected results and the twin realities of living in exile or returning to a repressive society begin to dawn on them. Playing themselves, the three leading men are by turns hilarious and heartbreaking, clumsy and compelling. But the greatest feat belongs to fledgling director Maryam Goormaghtigh, who made the film on a shoestring budget, with little more than her camera, a borrowed car, her three friends Arash, Hossein, and Ashkan, and a wonderfully empathetic eye for life’s quirks.