In this Sundance standout, Tehran artists risk everything to create, showing how friendship and creative defiance sustain hope under repression.
This is one in a series of film reviews from the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, focused on films by women, trans or nonbinary directors that tell compelling stories about the lives of women and girls.
Even when it’s created at great personal risk, nothing can negate the power of art. So, too, the importance of friendship, which impacts our choices, shapes our ideas about the past, present and future, and changes lives.
These are central themes of The Friend’s House Is Here, a U.S.-Iranian co-production that won the U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award for Ensemble Cast at Sundance this year. In their presentation of the award, the jury praised the film’s ensemble cast “for delivering performances that each of us could find ourselves in, revealing a story that is frighteningly universal. The ensemble injects the world with gravity, love and humor, and shows us the way community and connection are often our key to survival.”
Written, directed and produced by Hossein Keshavarz and Maryam Ataei, The Friend’s House Is Here is an all-around touching and vibrant look into the lives of a group of Tehran artists. Beautifully shot and performed with perceptive nuance, it truly is the ensemble cast that makes the film stand out; all the characters are both comfortingly familiar and captivating, like that woman in the neighborhood coffee shop or that man down the hall whom you’ve been hoping to befriend.
… It’s the joy and energy with which Pari, Hanna and their friends approach life and art that shines brightly through … operating at the margins of Tehran society, but with deep conviction that they are on the right path.
Dropping us in media res, into the lives of best friends and roommates Hanna (Hana Mana) and Pari (Mahshad Bahraminejad), the film begins with one of Pari’s performance art pieces, staged illegally by herself and her cast to a modest, appreciative audience. As avant-garde theatre, Pari’s piece enacts an imagined loss; in it, she cannot find Hanna and searches for her among friends and relations, with iterations of the same piece later in the film slowly revealing the likelihood that Hanna’s character (who is only present in the play as a projected video) has been disappeared, arrested for her also-illegal Instagram posts in which she dances in front of Iranian landmarks.
The specter of arrest lurks in the shadows of the film’s first half, but it’s the joy and energy with which Pari, Hanna and their friends approach life and art that shines brightly through. Their life is a Bohemian one, operating at the margins of Tehran society, but with deep conviction that they are on the right path. They have parties, rehearse, perform in underground venues, and engage in friendly but spirited arguments. They casually mention past forced evacuations, communication lockouts and nearby bombing keeping them awake at night, but still they work, live and love—a testament to how everyday life doesn’t stop, even when your country is in conflict.
The “country is full of artists,” proclaims Hanna’s boyfriend, Ali, watching street musicians perform during one of the couple’s early dates. While Hanna says dancing helps her fight her own fears, she is not as naive as her free-wheeling, lighthearted persona might have one believe. Planning to emigrate as soon as her visa is approved, Hanna offers Ali a cautious response: “Let’s see if they let it stay that way.”
… Everyday life doesn’t stop, even when your country is in conflict. … Friendship is the glue that holds communities together, making life beautiful even when the ugliness of the world threatens at the door.
Despite different personalities—Pari is more serious and constrained than the exuberant Hanna—the two friends share an intimate bond, playing games, dancing and singing together, shopping, and discussing each other’s work. While Pari refuses to protest Hanna’s plans to leave the country, wanting to support her friend, there’s a strong sense that her play acts out this anticipated loss. And yet, when it’s Pari who disappears after one performance, Hanna and Ali must rush to find her—whether or not it jeopardizes Hanna’s own future.
In The Friend’s House Is Here, friendship is the glue that holds communities together, making life beautiful even when the ugliness of the world threatens at the door. The film, too, makes a powerful point about art itself as a tool of resistance and hope, worth all the risks its practitioners are willing to take—a point that’s driven home both by the film’s fictional narrative and its own production.
In a case of life imitating art, the film circulates through its own act of defiance: It had to be smuggled out of Tehran for it to be shown at Sundance.
