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 se

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