Without her
Just two weeks before Roya is set to emigrate from Iran to Denmark at her husband’s insistence, she encounters a quiet young girl. The girl seems lost and doesn’t remember anything. Roya takes her in, unaware that the girl has abandoned her previous life and now come to replace Roya. A couple of days later, Roya finds out that she will be prohibited from leaving Iran unless she sells out a colleague. Soon after Roya refuses to betray her friend, the young girl steals Roya’s identity and takes over her life with the assistance of Roya’s husband, Babak. As Roya fights to recover her identity, she realizes, to her surprise, that no one remembers her anymore and that everybody takes the lost girl to be her.
Cast
- Roya
- Tannaz Tabatabaei
- Babak
- Saber Abar
- Zlba
- Shadi Karamroudi
- Arash
- Reza Davoudnejad
- Nahid
- Maede Tahmasbi
- Leili
- Faranak Kalantar
- Mojtaba Fallahi
Without her
Arian Vazirdaftari
- Fiction
- Production Country / Year
- Iran
- Language
- fa. OF mit en. UT
- Format
- DCP, Color, 110min
2.39:1, Discrete 5.1
- Original Title
- Bi Roya
Director & Crew
Arian Vazirdaftari
Born in 1988 in Teheran/Iran. Studied Industrial Design and Directing at the Art University of Tehran. Active as an author, director and producer.
Filmography
2016 NOT YET, Kurzfilm
2018 LIKE A GOOD KID: MESLE BACHE ADAM, Kurzfilm
2022 BI ROYA/ WITOUT HER, Spielfilm HOF 2022
“The story of someone actually losing her identity may seem surreal at first glance, but coming from a background where you’re blamed for who you are, it’s as realistic as it can get. Roya stands for her beliefs, but soon finds out that individual choice is merely an illusion if the everyone else is determined to define you otherwise. In the course of the story, Roya loses her true identity and learns a simple, tragic lesson: either you alter yourself and adapt or you will be eliminated and replaced by those who do. I tried to portray this imaginary storyline in the common realism of Iranian cinema with combination of genre elements, as a tribute to those intellectuals who sometimes appear to be lost maniacs of their own era”.
Arian Vazirdaftari
- Writer
- Arian Vazirdaftari
- Director of Photography
- Alireza Barazandeh
- Editor
- Mehdi Saadi
- Production Designer
- Mohsen Nasrollahi
- Costume Designer
- Elham Moein
- Sound
- Zohre Aliakbari
- Music Composer
- Bamdad Afshar
- Producer
- Saeed Saadi
- Houman Seyedi