Terrestrial Verses

In Tehran, a new father seeks to register the name (insufficiently Islamic, he is told) of his newborn son; a 20-something rideshare driver caught on camera without a hijab attempts to retrieve her impounded car; a man with poem tattoos applies for a driver’s license; an elderly woman pleads with the police for the return of her beloved dog. This taut, pulsing drama — composed of nine deceptively simple, single-take vignettes, each featuring an ordinary Iranian citizen facing an unseen bureaucrat — brilliantly incarnates the absurdity, hypocrisy, and seeds of defiance that belie authoritarian control.