Venice 2026: A Bit of Light and an Orizzonti Prize for Iran

The 83rd Venice Film Festival, held from September 2 to 12, closed with Iranian cinema represented in two of its major sections. Ali Asgari's A Bit of Light (Kami Nour) competed in the main competition, while Mohsen Gharaei's Falling House (Moragheb) screened in Orizzonti. Alongside them, Afghan filmmaker Shahrbanoo Sadat served on the seven-member main competition jury chaired by Maggie Gyllenhaal, extending the presence of Persian-speaking filmmakers at this year's festival from the screen to the jury table. The Golden Lion ultimately went to Woman Unknown by May el-Toukhy.

For Asgari, A Bit of Light marked a new stage in his long relationship with Venice. After two feature films in Orizzonti, he entered the main competition for the first time. His 87-minute film, starring Misagh Zareh, Sadaf Asgari, Forouzan Jamshidnejad, Ramtin Daghigh and Mina Rahimzadeh, follows a Tehran doctor who, after his arrest and the closure of his practice, decides to end his life and spends what he intends to be his final day visiting members of his family. Zareh, whom international audiences may remember as the father in Mohammad Rasoulof's The Seed of the Sacred Fig, is the center of gravity of the story. Asgari wrote the screenplay with Shadmehr Rastin, who also collaborated on Jafar Panahi's It Was Just an Accident.

The film drew a range of responses from the international press. Screen Daily singled out Zareh's performance and the film's gradual movement from despair toward the possibility of continuing to live. IndieWire went so far as to describe it as an Iranian answer to It's a Wonderful Life, emphasizing its hopeful side. Variety described a narrative that reaches an affirmation of life from within a dark situation, while The Hollywood Reporter focused on its mournful yet quietly comic tone. Cineuropa took a more critical view, arguing that the inevitable comparison with Abbas Kiarostami's Taste of Cherry worked against Asgari's film, while still praising Zareh's performance. Taken together, the reactions suggested that the debate centered less on the film's subject than on the way it transforms social despair into a personal and human drama. A Bit of Light left the festival without a prize from the main competition.

A few days before A Bit of Light screened, Gharaei's Falling House had its world premiere in Orizzonti on September 3. The Iran, United States and Germany co-production runs 130 minutes according to the festival's official listing and stars Laleh Marzban, Farhad Aslani, Rima Raminfar and Elena Khakbazan, with a score by Max Richter. The story follows Rashid, a prison guard suspended from his job who, as the family home faces demolition, discovers that his elder daughter intends to leave Iran to pursue a career as a model. His efforts to stop her turn the house into a battleground between conflicting ideas of freedom, family and the future. The screenplay was written before the events of this year, but its Venice premiere inevitably placed the film within the context of a rapidly changing Iran.

Reviews of Falling House were also divided. RogerEbert.com placed the film within the tradition of Iranian social realism and saw the house as a space where care and control gradually become indistinguishable from imprisonment. Screen Daily described it as an enraging portrait of the collision between a patriarchal structure and a younger generation of women, while arguing that some of its symbolism was too explicit. Cineuropa recognized the force of the collapsing-house metaphor but found the film uneven in the way it resolved its conflicts.

The festival's final verdict, however, gave Falling House one of the most visible Iranian moments of the closing ceremony. Laleh Marzban won the Orizzonti Award for Best Actress for her performance and, speaking in Persian, dedicated the prize to the women of Iran.

Shahrbanoo Sadat's presence on the main competition jury added another dimension to this year's festival. The Afghan filmmaker joined Maggie Gyllenhaal, Kaouther Ben Hania, Daniel Blumberg, Francesco Casetti, Xavier Giannoli and Johnnie To in deciding the awards among the 21 films in competition. The presence of filmmakers from Iran and Afghanistan, as directors, performers and jurors, offered a picture that extended beyond the list of winners: a cinema continuing to shape its own narratives out of difficult social and personal experiences, and to take part in the global conversation of cinema through its own distinct voices and perspectives.