The Circle (Persian: دایره, romanized: Dâyere) is a 2000 Iranian drama film produced and directed by Jafar Panahi that criticizes the treatment of women in Iran.

[3] The film begins in a maternity ward of a hospital, where the mother of Solmaz Gholami is upset to learn that her daughter has just given birth to a girl, even though the ultrasound indicated that the baby would be a boy.

Pari manages to escape, and eventually makes her way to a hospital where she finds Elham, another former prisoner who has hidden her past and is now a nurse, married to a doctor.

A guard answers and comes to the window, calling for Solmaz Gholami, the woman with a baby girl in the first scene, bringing the story to a circular conclusion.

The film does not have a central protagonist: instead, it is constructed around a sequence of short interconnecting stories that illustrate the everyday challenges women face in Iran.

[4] Throughout the film, Panahi focuses on the little rules symbolizing difficulties of life for Iranian women, such as the need to wear a chador under certain circumstances, or not being allowed to travel alone.

Similarly, the scene where Nargess describes to Arezou the beauty of the landscape of her hometown where she grew up playing with her brother, while taking care to point out the imperfections of the artist's hand, is a poignant reminder of hope and despair that runs as a common thread in the lives of his women characters throughout the film.