TEHRAN – Three Iranian films have been selected to open the 14th Diaspora Film Festival, set to be held from May 22 to 26 in Incheon, South Korea.

“Alone in Tehran” directed by Amen Sahraei, “Like Friends, Like Deer” by Malek Eghbali, and Mohammad Hormozi’s “Sash Window,” also known as “Orosi,” are the three films from Iran, which will be screened in the opening ceremony of the festival, Mehr reported.

A 2025 production, “Alone in Tehran” is a 15-minute documentary, experimental film about the 12-day War in Iran.

In June 2025, as Israel bombs Iran, director Amen Sahraei finds herself left alone in an apartment in Tehran. The emergency bag ready at home speaks to a daily life where states of emergency have become the norm. However, the conflict feels as though it will make everything vanish, just as she said. 

She begins to record with the smartphone in her hand. Thus, the short film “Alone in Tehran,” a blend of video diary and impromptu monodrama, witnesses the psychological isolation, frustration, and yearning for human connection in the midst of war through the most candid tone and grammar.

“Like Friends, Like Deer” is a 13-minute animation made in 2025. It evokes Albert Camus’s “The Guest,” a short story from his 1957 collection. Camus's work deals with the moral dilemma of a schoolteacher on a high plateau who is assigned to hand over an Arab prisoner during the Algerian War, exploring themes of human frailty and freedom. While the basic framework is similar, the focus is distinctly different. Whereas Camus poses questions by drawing on real-life events, “Like Friend, Like Deer” introduces a being with the face of a deer to reveal the absurd triangle between humanity and nature, humans and institutions, and institutions and nature in a fantastic and surreal manner.

“Sash Window” is a joint production of Iran and Spain, produced in 2025. In the 15-minute fiction, a female musician, apprehended by police while attempting to cross the border, finds herself perched upon just such a threshold. In this state of suspended movement, instead of pushing outward, she begins to listen slowly to the sensations seeping within. She, perhaps unknowingly, begins to translate her violent reality into the language of art.

SS/SAB