What kind of images remain when life narrows into darkness? What happens to dreaming when fatigue becomes ordinary? These five short films from Iran move through fragile spaces: broken connections, small intimacies, pressured bodies, and everyday moments shaped by fear, uncertainty, and care. Rather than explaining a political condition, the films stay close to its atmosphere: pauses, fractures, silence, brief warmth. The title comes from Homework: Holding the Light. Here, light is not salvation. It moves quietly between people: a face appearing for a moment in the dark, a distant voice, a gesture that resists fading away. Across the program, dreaming becomes less a form of escape than a form of persistence. The films drift between closeness and disturbance, memory and daily life, shadow and light. There are no heroes here. Only the small ways people carry one another through unstable times: hand to hand, image to image, light to light.
Homework: Holding the Light | Writer & Director: Majid Fakhrian
In a night class in a palm grove, the students, with the help of their teacher, experiment with different types of light and observing objects. Meanwhile, a blind child is searching for a classmate whose name is unfamiliar to all the students.
Memories of a Window | Writers and Directors: Mehraneh Salimian and Amin Pakparvar
Following crackdowns on protests in Iran, civilians begin documenting the unrest from behind windows. When a woman is shot while recording, a film student writes her a letter raising the question: Can revolution emerge from behind windows?
Slaughter | Writer & Director: Sahand Sarhaddi
“Besmel/Slaughter” is an experimental short film that delves into the archival and historical footage of the Iranian Revolution in 1979, depicting a symbolic narrative surrounding the ritualistic act of animal sacrifice, known as “Besmel”. It serves as an allegorical representation of a nation’s sacrifice amidst the backdrop of political transformations.
Taha | Writer and Director: Mahyar Mandegar
In a rundown Iranian circus in Los Angeles, 70-year-old groundskeeper decides to participate in the show in order to see what the trapeze dancer sees every night, up in the sky.
The Villain- Director: Parsa Ansari / Writers: Mobarakeh Mortazavi, Parsa Ansari
An aging man who plays the villain in an Iranian Passion Play is haunted by memories of his past and the woman he wronged many years ago.
