1001 Frames (2025)
There is a strain of Iranian cinema that loves to point the camera at itself, to sit an actor in a chair, ask them to perform, and watch the truth leak out around the edges of the fiction. Mehrnoush Alia's debut feature 1001 Frames belongs firmly to that lineage. The New York-based Iranian-American writer-director shot it without a permit on a single soundstage in Iran, and built it from real testimony: women she interviewed, and hundreds of accounts shared online.
The setup is deceptively simple. In a well-known director's studio, actresses audition for the role of Scheherazade, the storyteller of A Thousand and One Nights who keeps herself alive by spinning tales through the night. Slowly it becomes clear that the director wants far more than a lead actress. It is an Iranian take on the casting couch, a chamber thriller about the misuse of power dressed up as art. It premiered in Berlin's Panorama, won over audiences from Thessaloniki to Brooklyn, and reached the UK at the Raindance Film Festival.
To my surprise, and delight, I was recently emailed by Mohammad Aghebati (the main star of this movie) and so I had to check it out. Mehrnoush Alia's 2025 film 1001 Frames immediately put me in mind of Mohsen Makhmalbaf's brilliant Salaam Cinema. I've always maintained that movies generally fall into one of two camps: they're either a direct reflection of reality or a total escape from it. But Alia's film brilliantly blurs the lines between the two, creating this fascinating, meta-cinematic experience where the boundaries between documentary and fiction are completely torn down, leaving you constantly questioning what you're actually looking at.
The execution is what really sells this grand illusion. Right up until the final few minutes, I genuinely wasn't sure if what I was watching was a scripted narrative or actual real life. It felt incredibly authentic, possessing a claustrophobic, candid, and almost amateurish aesthetic. But you quickly realise that this raw, unpolished look is entirely intentional. It's a stylistic choice that carries the film exceptionally well, pulling you so deep into the gritty, mundane reality of the frame that the fantasy elements sneak in almost unnoticed.
To top it all off, I actually got the brilliant opportunity to interview the real-life director, Mehrnoush Alia, alongside Mohammad Aghebati who played the director in the film. It was a fantastic experience that gave me an even deeper appreciation for the clever, boundary-pushing tricks they were pulling on screen.
1001 Frames is a wonderfully deceptive, deeply engaging piece of cinema that plays with your perception in the best way possible, proving that sometimes the most powerful stories are the ones that refuse to tell you if they're real.
It is rare that a film keeps me genuinely unsure of what I am watching right up to the final minute, and rarer still that the trick feels earned rather than smug. 1001 Frames manages both. Getting to speak to the people behind it only deepened my admiration for how precisely it is put together. Seek it out, and try to go in knowing as little as you can.
Reviewed from a press screener courtesy of Loco Films. 1001 Frames had its UK premiere at the Raindance Film Festival 2026.
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More from the 2020s: Look Back (2024), The Whale (2022), All That's Left of You (2025)
