Shayda, a young Iranian woman living in Australia, finds refuge in a women’s shelter with her 6-year-old daughter, Mona. Having fled her husband, Hossein, and filed for divorce, Shayda struggles to maintain normalcy for Mona. Buoyed by the approach of Nowruz, she tries to forge a fresh start with new and unfettered freedoms. But when a judge grants Hossein visitation rights, he reenters their life, stoking Shayda’s fear that he’ll attempt to take Mona back to Iran.
Acting
Zar Amir Ebrahimi's face does more than most scripts.
Direction
Niasari's debut: deeply personal, lived-in, quietly radical.
Cinematography
Shelter spaces feel both prison and possibility.
Director
Noora Niasari
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Nowruz — Persian New Year — frames the narrative as renewal ritual against cyclical violence, with haft-sin table settings becoming symbols of what Shayda fights to preserve.
Director Noora Niasari drew from her own childhood in Australian women's shelters; the film's 2023 Sundance win made her the first Iranian-Australian filmmaker to take World Cinema Dramatic.
AU
