A Spark of Hope in the Past

Documentary | 15 min
2013

Due to the political and financial situation in Iran between the 1979 revolution and the present, many Iranians migrated to Western countries in recent decades. Officials estimated that around four to five million Iranians were living abroad (primarily in North America and Europe) by 2010. This short documentary portrays the final week of an Iranian couple in Tehran as they prepared to leave Iran permanently in 2009. The footage for this film was captured over four consecutive days in 2009 without any initial intention of using it for a movie. Four years later, the filmmaker found himself among the millions of Iranians who had left their homeland, as he departed Iran to study in Europe. Mani left the country from the same house depicted in the movie, a place where he had once lived. The film is nearly devoid of dialogue, prioritizing a visual narrative experience for viewers.

Note: Some of the subtitles were added with grammatical errors and hard-coded into the film, unfortunately making them uneditable. However, these errors do not impact the overall narrative of the film.