2025. Documentary essay, 104 min.

Color, 16mm, Super 8, Video, Iran – USA- France

A film by Bani Khoshnoudi / Edited by Claire Atherton

Jury Prize in the Burning Lights Competition at Visions du Réel

Best Director Prize / Puma de Plata at FICUNAM

WORLD PREMIERE at Visions du Réel – Burning Lights Competition

Abandoned houses, surviving objects that carry memory. Exiled from Iran after her film on the 2009 Green Movement was banned, a filmmaker breaks her family’s decades-long silence about a disappeared cousin, executed during the 1988 purges in Iran’s political prisons. Grappling with estrangement and loss, she uses fragments, archives, and the images made during her years of diaristic filming in Iran to reflect on the collective taboo, the fear that silenced the population for so many years, and the explosion of resistance that continues to grow within Iranian society today.

Produced by Pensée Sauvage Films in coproduction with KinoElektron

With the support of the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts, CNC (Centre National de la Cinématographie), Image/Mouvement of the Cnap (Centre National des Arts Plastiques), and La Scam – Brouillon d’un rêve

Trailer.

Screenings

• WORLD PREMIERE: Visions du Réel – Burning Lights competition
• FICUNAM (Mexico City) – International Competition
• Subversive Film Festival (Zagreb) – Documentary Competition
• Filmfest München – Cine Rebels Competition (German premiere)
• Dokufest Kosovo – Human Rights Dox Competition
• DMZ International Documentary Film Festival – Frontier Competition (Asian Premiere)
• Cámara Lúcida international Film festival, Ecuador
• Pravo Ljudski Film Festival, Sarajevo
• Lima Alterna Festival Internacional de cine – International Competition 
• FIC Valdivia – Gala / Muestra de Cine Contemporaneo
• Doclisboa – From the Earth to the Moon (Portuguese premiere)
• Viennale (Austrian premiere)
• IDFA – Best of fests (Dutch premiere)
• Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival – Constellations (Czech premiere)
• Gijon International Film Festival – Esbilla section (Spanish premiere)
• Filmmaker Festival – International Competition (Italian premiere)
• BOZAR – Brussels / New releases (November 2025 – January 2026, Belgian Premiere)
• Athens Avant-Garde Film Festival

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