A sobering, beautifully crafted tale of women's second-class status in Iran, The Day I Became a Woman is both subtle and refreshingly frank in making its points about such themes, but blessed with the kind of dynamic insight that lends it a truly memorable status. Broken up into three fully realized vignettes tracing different women at different stages of their lives, director Marziyeh Meshkini's feature is relaxed and reflective, freeing it from the more earnest offerings of its native country in recent years. The movie is very brief (a mere 78 minutes), but packed with acute detail about Iranian society in even its smallest scenes, and critical without becoming an insufferable tract. Each short has enough emotional resonance to count as a film itself, and the last sequence in particular has a gentle grace not seen since the likes of Jacques Tati. Woman was chosen as one of the spring 2000 Shooting Gallery Film Series features, a promising feat due to the film's censorship problems in its native country, which prevented a wide release due to objections to some of the subject matter.