A Few Knots Away

Written and directed by

Mansour Forouzesh

Logline:
As the island sinks into turmoil, Hashem returns to take his recently departed father’s body—severing the last thread that ties him to the land. But as tensions rise and a storm brews at sea, even the dead seem reluctant to leave.

Synopsis:
The island where Hashem was born has long been plagued by hardship, famine, war, and unresolved disputes have driven many to seek a better life elsewhere. Its people remain divided: some cling to the island as home, while others dream of escape.

Hashem, who left the island years ago, returns after the death of his father, Hajj Habib, one of the island’s respected elders. But his visit is not just for mourning.

Hashem has come to take his father’s body off the island, hoping to sever his final connection to a place he no longer calls home.
His decision is met with resistance from his sister and Babazar, the island’s remaining elder, who view his act as a betrayal. Undeterred, Hashem sets out to transport the body by sea, but nature itself rises against him, forcing him to confront what it truly means to leave.

Director's Statement

This is a story born from the margins, of a land where geography shapes destiny, where the struggle for mere survival has long overshadowed the dreams of a better life. On this island, the question is no longer if one should leave, but how to carry the weight of what must be left behind.

But migration is never just a crossing of borders. It is a journey through memory, grief, and belonging. To leave is to unravel the invisible threads that bind us to the soil, to the past, to those who raised us. For Hashem, that thread is his father’s body, a final, fragile connection to the place he once called home.

In A Few Knots Away, Hashem returns not for closure, but to carry his father beyond the horizon. Yet even in death, the island resists. His sister, the elders, the sea itself, none are ready to let go.

This film is about those quiet battles between staying and leaving, between what we carry and what we bury. It is about the knots that hold us, and the storms that rise when we try to untie them.

CAST

Reza Sheikhansari as Hashem

Mojdeh Daie as Atiye

Amir Ghafari as Babazar

Our Story

The production of A Few Knots Away presented significant challenges, particularly due to the diverse climatic conditions required by the script. Since the story is set on a fictional island—intentionally created to avoid the usual stereotypes of Iranian islands—we needed to find locations that could visually support this imagined geography.

Most Iranian islands lie in the south, within the Persian Gulf, where snowfall is virtually nonexistent. However, the film includes scenes set in snowy, cold conditions, reflecting the emotional and physical landscape of the protagonist. To achieve this, we had to look north. In the end, the film was shot across three different regions in Iran, spanning more than a thousand kilometers.

The cinematography by Ali Kazemi—who has collaborated with me for over a decade—combined with strong performances from the cast, provided rich, high-quality material for the edit. After a year of production, we completed post-production in September 2017. Just two months later, A Few Knots Away had its international premiere at the Cork International Film Festival in Ireland.