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"My parents and I left Iran when I was 7 years old," she says in the voiceover of "Najeeb: A Persian Girl in America," an offering of the Berkeley Video & Film Festival. "My parents weren't expecting the consequences of what they call a morally free American society."

Eshaghian goes on to say that while she has always pushed for more freedom than her Iranian Jewish friends, now that she's 25, the pressure is on for her to get married, both from her parents and the Persian Jewish community in Los Angeles.

Eshaghian's family members are willing to document, quite well, the culture clash that divides two generations. She relies on her friends to reveal the cultural divide that separates them from their American-born peers. They speak about what it's like to grow up in a permissive society where sex is so accepted, yet they are not allowed even to date.

Several women divulge that if a Persian man discovers his intended bride is not a virgin, that's the end of the relationship.

Many girls who do date hide this fact, often going places where no one from "the community" will see them. And most shocking, the filmmaker interviews a gynecologist, who discloses that a large part of his practice comes from hymen reconstruction.

Eshaghian clearly feels the pressure to marry from everyone around her. At one social gathering, people are offering to set her up, and at her cousin Sharona's baby shower, every person who greets her says, "May it happen to you next."

While there's nothing exemplary about this short film, it does provide a window onto a very insular and intensely private Jewish community that, in general, doesn't like a camera to be cast on it. For that reason alone, it is worth seeing.

— Alexandra J. Wall

"Najeeb" is in the afternoon program of the Berkeley Video & Film Festival, beginning at 2 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 19 at the Fine Arts Cinema, 2451 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley. $8. Information: (510) 843-3699.