‘Maya and Samar’ Director Blasts NC-17 Rating for Queer Romantic Drama

Director Anita Doron blasted the “shocking” decision by the MPAA to slap an NC-17 rating on “Maya and Samar,” an Athens-set romantic drama about the torrid affair between a Canadian journalist and a queer Afghan woman that has its world premiere Nov. 4 at the Thessaloniki Film Festival.

“The fact that we got an NC-17 rating, even though this film is a love story, but many other films — where it’s not a queer love story — [don’t] get an NC-17 rating, was…shocking,” Doron told Variety. 

The director, best known as the screenwriter behind the Oscar-nominated animated feature “The Breadwinner,” defended the graphic portrayal of her protagonists’ romance, insisting that the film’s steamy sex scenes are a celebration of “the joy and the sacredness of their sexuality, of their shared sexual experience.”

Written by Tamara Faith Berger (“Lie With Me,” “Steal Away”), the film follows Maya (Nicolette Pearse), a rising journalist covering sex and pop culture at a hip indie website, whose fateful encounter one night with Samar (Amanda Babaei Vieira) — a queer Afghan woman living in Greece after a harrowing escape from the Taliban — lights the spark for a brief but explosive affair.

That romance exposes the fault lines between their conflicting cultures, with Maya — a young, liberal Westerner whose freewheeling lifestyle is propped up by her unexamined privilege — coming face to face with a woman for whom even love is an act of resistance. Their romance, said Doron, is “not just an affair; it is a reckoning that holds a mirror up to the illusions of the savior, and to the truths we prefer avoiding.”

“Maya and Samar” is a Serendipity Point Films, January Media and Filmiki Productions co-production. The Canada-Hellenic Republic co-production is produced in association with Telefilm Canada, the Greek Film Center, Distant Horizon, Bell Media, CBC, Ontario Creates and the Harold Greenberg Fund, with the support of EKOME. 

The film is produced by Robert Lantos (“Eastern Promises,” “Crimes of the Future”), Julia Rosenberg (“Meadowlarks,” “Out Standing”) and Laura Lanktree (“Crimes of the Future”), with Filmiki’s Nikolas Alavanos (“When We Were Sisters,” “The Last Taxi Driver”) as co-producer, and Steve Solomos (“The Shrouds,” “Seven Veils”) as supervising producer. Distant Horizon’s Anant Singh and Sanjeev Singh (“Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom,” “Yesterday,” “Sarafina!”) are executive producers, along with Serendipity’s Aida Tannyan and VVS Films’ Harry Grivakis, Ernie Grivakis, Javi Hernandez and Claire Peace-McConnell.

Serendipity’s Lanktree called “Maya and Samar” a “passion project” that was “many years in the making,” describing it as a film that’s grounded in the lived experience of the many Afghan refugees who, like Samar, fled the oppressive Taliban regime in search of a better life. 

Traveling overland through Iran and Turkey, then making the perilous Mediterranean crossing, many arrive in Athens — the epicenter of the past decade’s refugee crisis in Europe — where, undocumented, unwanted by the Greek government, they scrabble at the margins of Greek society.

While researching “Maya and Samar,” Lanktree and the production team spoke to countless refugees about their journey, going on to hire many as cultural consultants on the film. “All of those stories were incredibly important to us as we started into this production,” she said. “We wanted to make sure that we were really honoring the truth of what it was like for these Afghans living in Athens.”

Equally important was understanding the reality they left behind in Afghanistan — particularly for women and members of the LGBTQ community, who have faced brutal repression under the Taliban. 

In spite of that crackdown, Vieira — a winner of Germany’s prestigious Ulrich Wildgruber Prize — noted that there’s a vibrant, underground queer community in Afghanistan, whose “resilience and inventiveness” is “beyond inspiring.” “Maya and Samar,” she said, honors that resilience, while also proving that “wherever there’s oppression, there’s always joy and resistance.”

Pearse, who recalled the immediate rapport she struck up with her co-star, praised the production for how it handled the duo’s racy sex scenes. “We had full control over how our characters would express their desire. There was an environment where we had freedom and we had control,” she said. “There was a sacred space carved out for us to make this what we wanted it to be.”

VVS will release “Maya and Samar” in Canada, with Distant Horizon handling international sales. With the film’s U.S. rights still up for grabs, the filmmakers slammed the NC-17 rating, calling out both the MPAA and the industry for what they described as a double standard when it comes to depictions of lesbian love on screen.

“In terms of the representation of queer love, I think over the last few years…we’ve seen an increasing amount of more mainstream LGBTQ love stories,” said Lanktree. “But particularly when it’s lesbian love, it continues to be portrayed through a male lens.

“So much about Samar’s life is about oppression. But she had agency in those moments [with Maya]. She was choosing to be free and give her love.”

“Ever since I started making films, I’ve been waiting and dying to tell stories where female sexuality is not a decoration or titillation for the audiences, but it’s a story from within the experience and the characters,” added Doron. “[Maya and Samar’s love] is chaotic and poetic and it’s alive.” 

The Thessaloniki Film Festival runs Oct. 30 – Nov. 9.