Our Summer in Tehran

Gr 10 Up—Justine Shapiro, a Jewish-American documentary filmmaker and former host of the travel series Globe Trekker, wanted to explore the life of middle-class families in Iranian society in order to understand how their culture might share some qualities with our own. After a lengthy approval process both here and abroad, she and her six-year-old son were permitted to travel to Iran and stay with three diverse middle-class Iranian families with children over the summer. The head of one family was a government employee and loyalist, another was presided over by a single mother, and the third family had adopted many Western customs in that religious oriented country. The program follows Shapiro, who asked that her religion not be shared with her hosts, as she experiences and discusses daily family life in a country which many see as a pariah. As one might expect, there are stark differences between our culture and theirs, but the families have many of the same hopes and aspirations as others around the world. While chapter selection is not an option nor are supplemental materials available, English subtitles are used when needed throughout the well-paced presentation. For libraries with hefty budgets, the film could be of value in high school contemporary issues and sociology classes as well as a popular general-interest addition to larger media collections.—Dwain Thomas, formerly Lake Park High School, Roselle, IL