I am going to Vancouver International Film Festival with 13 and A Half. Unprecedented, daring and set in Tehran, co-directors Abbas Ahmadi and Nader Davoodi's film provides a rare glimpse beneath the chador, as they document the all-female stage play 13, courageously directed and entirely cast with women. The play is a hyperbolic enactment of a King’s harem where his many wives and mother vie lavishly for his attention. When confronted by a beautiful French foreigner and unable to beat her, they comply with imitations of her. Playfully exposing aspects of Iranian women’s roles in history, and commenting on present-day realities, this documentary is unabashed in its ability to challenge. Breathtakingly honest interviews with the cast and director Banafsheh Tavanaee shine a hopeful light on Iranian women and the conflict between traditionalism and modernism heightened by the Islamic Revolution.