1001 Frames

Filmmaker's note

1001 Frames walks a deliberate line between fiction and documentary, weaving together real testimonies I have collected over years into a constructed, fictional audition space where actors reenact experiences drawn from lived reality. Inspired in part by a close friend’s story—an ambitious actress whose path was derailed by abuse both in training and within the industry—the film confronts the pervasive, often hidden structures of gender-based exploitation that exist not only in cinema but across societies. The audition room becomes a microcosm: a place where dreams are supposed to begin, yet are too often shaped by coercion, silence, and power. Growing up in Iran, I witnessed firsthand the systemic restrictions imposed on women and the suffocating weight of those limitations; this film is deeply rooted in that history, while also resonating with global movements like #MeToo and the courage of the “Women, Life, Freedom” uprising. Through a hybrid form that blends realism with elements of suspense and horror, I aim to create an unsettling intimacy—placing the viewer in the position of observer, implicating them in the dynamics of looking, power, and control. The stories told in the film are not isolated; they echo across borders, from Iran to the United States, revealing how normalized such abuses have been. In reimagining the myth of Scheherazade, it is not a single woman but a chorus of voices that resists silence, reclaiming narrative as a form of survival and defiance.