Head to Head (2026) Movie Drinking Game
Take a Drink: for movies within movies
Take a Drink: for each new scene
Take a Drink: for each messed up take
Take a Drink: whenever the topic of cell phones come sup
Do a Shot: for every complaint about the clothes
By: Henry J. Fromage (Two Beers) –
The famous Iranian social realist film director who is acclaimed abroad and harassed by the government at home is such a reality it’s practically an expectation, so it’s perhaps surprising there haven’t been more films directly addressing that experience.
Head to Head drops us into an unsanctioned film shoot, in which Bahar, a female director renowned on the international circuit, is shooting a film in which men recreate famous Iranian movie scenes by playing the women in them, all the time wearing the mandatory head scarves.
A Toast
We, and the four men starring in the production, are at first told that Bahar’s intended film is a treatise on small unnatural tropes of Iranian film that men may not recognize, but that women will instantly understand to be kowtowing to the morality police. Things like women not being allowed to dance even among men doing so enthusiastically, or wearing headscarves in bed, or always standing near the men in the sea or the swimming pool, but never joining them despite being hotter than they ever are with their heat-entrapping scarves.
The men agree to this because they think it’ll be their stepping stone to fame and perhaps even an exit visa, but they don’t know that Bahar and her team are secretly filming their reactions on and off set, especially as they start to to grate against their hot scarfs and a female director’s unwavering control. The real movie is about how they couldn’t take living an Iranian woman’s reality for even a few days.
While this is interesting, it becomes a bit repetitive, at least until things liven up considerably when authorities set them on the run and a few of the group abscond in a slow old van. Now this concept is essentially forced to met a real world where conservative old women from nearby towns and those ever present morality police and highway hijab cameras are.
This section of the film really drives home just how supremely done with this bullshit Bahar really is, and all those supposed allies whose actions betray their clout-chasing words. The ending is perfectly summative of all of these feelings and what boils down to our two main characters’ journeys with them.
Beer Two
Director Bahar is supremely obstinate, choosing principles over self-preservation, but also seemingly uncaring about her cast and crew. She’s on a vendetta, and they’re either with her, or entirely ancillary. Hers is a wholly earned righteous anger, but by falling into the trap of thinking the ends justify the means, she just makes herself more alike to those she despises than she might like admit.
Verdict
Head to Head is a furious film about the absurdities of female representation in Iranian film, even among those who fancy themselves enlightened.
