Women Without Men is a 2009 film adaptation of the 1990 Shahrnush Parsipur novel, directed by Shirin Neshat.

[3] The film was called "visually transfixing" by The New York Times reviewer Stephen Holden, who added, "the film surpasses even Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon in the fierce beauty and precision of its cinematography (by Martin Gschlacht)."

Two of the film's recurrent images are of a long dirt road extending to the horizon on which the characters walk, and a river that suggests, "a deep current of feminine resilience below an impassive exterior.

"[1] Women Without Men was filmed in Morocco, with Casablanca standing in for Tehran, Iran.

Her tyrannical brother, Amir Khan, wants Munis to prepare for a visiting suitor and demands that she cook dinner for them.

When she scoffs at the idea, he gets angry, and threatens that if she leaves the house he will break her legs.

A second woman, the religiously observant Faezeh (Pegah Ferydoni), joins Munis and they discuss the protests.

Zarin curls into a corner and begins to sob, as the madam continues to yell that there is another customer.

In the next sequence, a wealthy 50-year-old woman named Fakhri (Arita Shahrzad), arrives at a military event where her husband Sadr, a general, is being honored.

They get into a marital dispute about another officer, an old flame, Abbas (Bijan Daneshmand) who has returned to Tehran and with whom she has been seen talking.

Sadr tells Fakhri she is aging and that if she is unable to satisfy him sexually, he'll get another wife.

She is wearing a long (a traditional Iranian piece of cloth used to cover the body in a public bath).

A female dallak (a person whose job is to help people wash themselves in a public bath) offers to aid her but she refuses.

When Zarin opens the robe to bathe, her gaunt body and protruding ribs are revealed.

She proceeds to scrub her body vigorously, so hard that her skin becomes raw and bleeds.

Zarin walks until daybreak onto a dirt road, and the rivulet from the beginning of the film appears again.

The military wife, Fakhri, arrives at a restaurant where her old flame, Abbas, is having a sociopolitical discussion with a group of artists.

He takes Fakhri to a beautiful, quaint villa house, a mystical retreat which she buys.

While in Amir Khan's house following the seer's instructions, in a magical realist trope, Faezeh hears Munis' voice beckoning from the ground.

Munis, who was a virtual prisoner in the house even when controlled by her tyrannical brother, goes out to a café to listen to the radio, Faezeh following her.

Munis walks out to find Faezeh curled up into a ball and crying after she has been raped, and takes her to the garden.

Munis begins a second fantasy life as an independent woman working with an underground Communist group.

In this surreal sequence filled with abstract voices and music, she watches herself lying on the ground helpless, as the two men rape her.

Faezeh walks out of the house without her requisite chador, her long hair flowing down to her shoulders.

A meeting occurs among members of the Tudeh Party, including the young man Munis met earlier.

A man is speaking on a megaphone, claiming the Shah has run away, but the danger of a coup is still imminent.

Amir asks Faezeh what has happened to her hijab (head covering) and who are these dubious people he thinks she has surrounded herself with.

Amir tells Faezeh that he has now come to take her hand and not to worry about his other wife, who will act as a servant to her.

The next scene is a Tudeh marriage gathering, a celebration which may be a front for their covert publishing activities.

Back at the garden party, Faezeh, crying, walks into the room where Fakhri is singing.