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Ten
Zeitgeist Films


8.3

based on 21 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 8 votes
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FILM:

MPAA RATING: Not Rated

Starring Mania Akbari, and Amin Maher

A look at the modern sociopolitical landscape of Iran as seen through the eyes of one woman as she drives through the streets of Tehran over a period of several days. Her journey is comprised of ten conversations with various female passengers. (Zeitgeist Films)

GENRE(S):	Foreign
WRITTEN BY:	Abbas Kiarostami
DIRECTED BY:	Abbas Kiarostami
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: November 2, 2004 Video: November 2, 2004 Theatrical: March 5, 2003
RUNNING TIME:	94 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	France / Iran
LANGUAGE(S):	Farsi (with English subtitles)

Official Selection, 2002 Cannes Film Festival

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

Iran's greatest filmmaker is fond of stripping personalities bare through conversations they have while riding in cars. Here he pushes his favorite dramatic device to its limit.

100

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

The ultimate lesson in less-is-more cinema, an intimate and revelatory character study as well as a brilliant, almost symphonic rendering of the distracted, anxious, half-alienated and half-meditative state in which we spend vast amounts of our lives.

100

San Francisco Chronicle Jonathan Curiel

A minimalist film, Ten looks and feels like a documentary. At the end, there is no big denouement, but a profound realization that the people we see on camera are all aching for answers -- and struggling to come to terms with their lives.

100

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

The new Abbas Kiarostami film is called Ten, and in it something amazing happens: nothing.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

There's no doubt that Kiarostami is giving us a lesson in social politics, but the education lies in the mosaic pieced together from conversations and situations.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

Nobody handles unvarnished interactions quite the way Kiarostami does, and for much of Ten, it's a kind of austere thrill to watch him focus so intently on one aspect of his craft.

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

Kiarostami has been hailed as the premier humanist filmmaker at work in a larger Iranian cinematic renaissance, and all his formal signatures are on view here -- the small, intimate canvas, the loose, improvised air of the performances, the absence of an authoritarian directorial hand.

Variety Deborah Young

10 dazzling and perceptive snapshots of women with which femmes everywhere can identify.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

A work of inspired simplicity.

LA Weekly John Powers

One of the year's finest movies, it's not quite the masterpiece that some of Kiarostami's cultists want it to be.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Shows us, in an extraordinarily simple way, the hopes and frustrations of one woman's life.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

Conceptually rigorous, splendidly economical, and radically Bazinian.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

The film offers a fascinating glimpse of the Iranian urban middle class, and though it eschews most of the pleasures of composition and landscape found in other Kiarostami films, it's never less than riveting.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

A film made by a master, with a simplicity that is really revolutionary. It's a work capable of changing the ways you look at the movies - and at life.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

A glimpse into a society that has grown more open, more free, and also more casually selfish in its interpersonal aggression.

TV Guide Ken Fox

Inexpensively shot on digital video, it's an invaluable work of art.

Los Angeles Times Manohla Dargis

One of the best films to open so far this year, but greeting each new work from a favored director as if it were equally brilliant can't be good for anyone, the director included.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

Ten may strain your patience but that's the high-stakes gamble of this provocative project.

New York Post V.A. Musetto

Breezy, entertaining and enlightening.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

The already minimalist filmmaker has gone positively threadbare with Ten, a movie that feels as if there was no director on the set. For the most part, there wasn't.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

The shame is that more accessible Iranian directors are being neglected in the overpraise of Kiarostami.

The average user rating for this movie is 8.3 (out of 10) based on 8 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

melika k. gave it a10:
It's great and diffrent from the other films of kiarostami. when the film is finished you feel something and it makes you think.(and i shoud say all his films actually creates a commen sense inside the spectators) and ten makes a diffrent one.

mazi gave it a9:
Sensational & excellent with ingeniously structure.the film split beneath layers of chracters & ‎shows differnt standpoints of them.young mother complain about dependance of women to men ‎& limitatiom of females in society.her pre-teen son(amin) have ‎ male dominant thoughts & accuse her mother to lack of responsibility & leaving them.the street ‎prostitute believe that all men-women sexual relationships are base on commerce.the old ‎religious woman believe to fate & ask from young woman to pray.‎ young friend of woman shave her head because of break of relationship with her candidate.‎ in fact all of them are victims of cruel society. ‎

Vince H. gave it a 10:
Great film. Not Kiarostami's best though. Economical, radical & socio-human filmmaking here, with the 95 minute film taking place completely in a car with a woman crusing through the streets of Iran & her conversations with people along the way, including her son, sister, a prostitute, etc. Definitely one of the best of the year (so far).

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Ten Zeitgeist Films

Ten
Zeitgeist Films