Despite not showing a single kick of the ball, this is one of the best films about the experience of watching football that you'll see. And so much more. Iranian director Panahi uses women's exclusion from football as a metaphor for their wider repression of women in his society and its effects. But though that sounds grimly serious, don't expect a depressing or dour film.

Deeply serious it is, but despite all that not only is it very funny, but a terrific sense of sheer joy and optimism flood the final scenes. Long takes, non-professional actors and documentary-feel filming in real situations give it a Ken Loach style immediacy, but it's also full of the beautifully composed shots we expect of Iranian cinema.

In Iran women are not allowed into football matches, ostensibly because they would be offended by the language, and would have to sit alongside men who aren't family members. However, some women try their luck at getting in. It's the day of the World Cup 2006 decider between Iran and Bahrain, and an elderly man is being driven along the city streets (a favourite Iranian cinema device), desperately seeking his daughter, whom he fears has made off to the football stadium.

Buses full of loud excited fans stream past, and in one sits a girl dressed, not very convincingly, as a boy. It's her first time going to a match, she's very nervous, and bottles out at the stadium entrance when faced with a pat-down search. She's taken off to a pen just outside the concourse where she, along with five other young women, is guarded by a comical group of reluctant young soldiers, their leader just seeing out his time in the military while pining for his home back in the country. They're a mixed bunch of women, fearful, streetwise, resigned, playful, one, to the amazement of the soldiers, actually a footballer herself. The characters are subtly developed as they protest at the rules excluding them, and prevail upon one of their guards to commentate on the game which he can see a confined view of through a narrow gap in the wall (an echo of the traditional Islamic woman's view of the world from purdah). It's both funny and terribly sad. A young generation having to go through the motions of rules that they know there is no rationale for. It's not just a football match that's being withheld, but the possibility of self-expression and freewill.

The absurdity climaxes in a bravura comic scene as a young, not too bright soldier solemnly conducts one of the prisoners, absurdly made to wear a huge poster of a player's face as a disguise, to the Gents' (there is, naturally, no Ladies') and struggles to keep full-bladdered men out while she's there. But the absolute magic comes in the final sequence as the army van takes the girls to the police station through a teeming, rejoicing Tehran (shot on the actual night of victory), guards and prisoners united at last in anxiety for the result then in heady celebration. It's one of those rare times when football really does, against all the odds, seem to show possibilities for true liberation, and the feeling of optimism is overwhelming. Dangerous stuff, seemingly - in Iran the film is banned.

Winner of the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, this is now going the rounds of European festivals and hopefully will get some limited release in the UK next year. See it if you can.