The Vanishing Point

synopsis

The camera pans several times across the empty apartment. It seems spacious, unused, neglected. In this autobiographical film, the director returns to the places where her family lived before they were forced to flee the country. With its transformation into an authoritarian theocracy after 1979, Iran became a regime that oppressed many groups of the population—primarily women, but also advocates of liberal values and secularization. It was as if, almost overnight, the Middle Eastern country had become a different society. In the film, we cross this invisible boundary between the old and new worlds several times and, together with its author, try to catch the vanishing point on the horizon of both the past and the future.

“My work is one concerned with the labour of memory, an attempt to make a placeholder for more to come forward, and an invitation to reflect together and participate in the archive.” — Bani Khoshnoudi

biography

Bani Khoshnoudi (born 1977) is an Iranian filmmaker and visual artist whose work focuses on documentary and feature films and other visual works. She is interested in themes of modernity, exile, and migration. Her essay film The Silent Majority Speaks (2009) was banned by authorities in Iran and Lebanon.

film details

director:	Bani Khoshnoudi
producer:	Bani Khoshnoudi, Janja Kralj
script:	Bani Khoshnoudi
photography:	Bani Khoshnoudi
editing:	Claire Atherton
sound design:	Éric Lesachet