Film Summary: One night in a company where people order dreams, a man’s dream does not unfold according to his order.

Maryam Bakhtiari is a filmmaker and actress born in 1995 in Tehran. She holds a Master’s degree in Cinema from the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Tehran. Her first short film, “Falling Up,” was featured in prestigious international festivals, including the 20th Tirana International Film Festival and the 41st Rhode Island Film Festival.

Redcut: How and when did you start filmmaking, especially in a society where the cinema space is dominated by men in power, and patriarchy seeks to ignore women’s cinema or use women as tools for expressing male ideas? How did you decide to become a filmmaker?

Maryam Bakhtiari

Maryam: Since childhood, thanks to my parents who love cinema, I watched a lot of films and always followed cinema. During my undergraduate studies, I met a friend who was a short film director, and through my interactions with him, I realized my interest in cinema went beyond just watching films; I wanted to make my own film. After completing my undergraduate degree, I pursued cinema seriously and changed my major to cinema for my master’s, and then I made “Falling Up,” my first film. I didn’t face any obstacles entering this path. However, I noticed that after entering the filmmaking scene, many colleagues attributed some of your successes to your being a woman. Personally, I don’t see my gender as a significant factor in my filmmaking and don’t want to separate myself from male filmmakers. However, it is a sad reality that some female filmmakers might face discrimination from the very beginning of their careers because of their gender. I believe that filmmaking ideally involves creating a personal world free from sexual identity.

Redcut: How did you interpret the verse “How will you smooth the world? The world will accept smoothing”? The film starts with a verse from Rudaki. What is the connection of this verse to the film?

Maryam: The main theme of the screenplay and one of my constant concerns is the issue of acceptance. I think everyone has a problem or knot that they may experience differently by accepting it and changing their perspective on that issue. But often this acceptance either doesn’t happen or people spend a lot of time grappling with it. This verse closely aligned with my thoughts, and given the conflicting approaches of the two characters to the issues they face in life, I thought it was interesting and suitable for the beginning of the film.

Redcut: You acted and directed in the film. How did you decide to put yourself in this position, directing in front of the camera and behind it?

Maryam: My role as the girl was suggested by Amin Chadgani, my co-writer. Initially, I wasn’t interested in this idea at all, but after a while, I thought that my presence as the girl character might make her a more dynamic character and move her away from being a stereotype. On the other hand, I thought my presence might offer a new perspective for casting individuals with different physiques for more diverse roles.

Redcut: In the perspective of Avicenna, in a state of sleep, the imaginative power connects to the holy realm and through shared senses, achieves discovery and inspiration. Mulla Sadra holds a similar view but believes that a person must reach a comprehensive rank in three intellectual, spiritual, and sensory stages to unite with the active intellect. Questions such as what is the nature of dreams? Do dreams need interpretation? If the answer is yes, do all dreams need to be interpreted, or only some of them? Is there a difference between interpretation and explanation? are questions that any rational person might consider. In your film, we watch a dream where we do not know if the main character is asleep in their dream or is in the therapist’s place. How did this reinterpretation of sleep and reality and the emphasis on the intersection of dreams form in your mind?

Maryam: The issue of dreaming has always intrigued me, and the idea that someone could see my dream and share it with me brings me great joy. One day, I considered how knowing what someone dreamed about you could significantly alter lives and relationships. This led to the concept of a company where people can order dreams. In this context, dreams could represent the desires and wishes of characters that are otherwise unattainable in real life. We decided to place two characters who have completely different approaches to their dream orders in opposition to each other: a man who repeats a memory from his past in his dreams and a woman who tries to experience things in her dreams that she cannot achieve in her real life.

Redcut: The female protagonist in the film plays with a remarkable sense of ease and freedom. Could you tell us more about this character, who is also a filmmaker? How did you live your dreams through the film?

Maryam: I believe both characters embody aspects of my personality. The male character represents parts of me that have struggled to move on from the past and clings to memories. However, the female character reflects stronger moments of myself. Despite her struggles, she is more liberated and seeks to create different experiences for herself. She has accepted the bitterness of reality, but that hasn’t trapped her; instead, she lives various lives each night in a new form. I aspire to be more like her every day.

Redcut: The constructed spaces and locations in the film are modern, empty, and eerie, somewhat detached from everyday life. Did you intentionally create this atmosphere to illustrate a boundary between imagination and reality, bringing cinema closer to the dreams we have?

Maryam: Depicting a company that orders dreams was a significant challenge for me. I realized that due to financial constraints and limitations in Iran, I couldn’t represent a company like those seen in non-Iranian films, which would make our company a mere mock-up of an ideal. My interest in minimal design and its coordination with the way we framed scenes and handled the camera led me to this design approach. In discussions with the set designer, we concluded that the design of the props should follow the same minimal model. We didn’t want the company’s props to evoke those from a familiar setting in the viewers’ daily lives, so we agreed to keep the props and space as minimal as possible.

Redcut: Do you have any upcoming projects? If you’re currently writing or making a new film, could you elaborate on it?

Maryam: I completed my second film last July, which, despite narrative similarities, takes a different form. These days, I am working on writing my first feature screenplay.