Private Project

DON'T TOUCH ANYTHNG

Leyla, a single mother viciously obsessed with order and tidiness, loses control at a gathering where one of the guests brings her little boy unannounced, leaving him to mess with the house symmetry.
Leyla takes a break from the living room’s chaos in the kitchen only to find out the boy is ruining her carefully prepared chocolate cake. Leyla foreacly cleans his hands after putting him up on the kitchen counter. In an attempt to free himself, the little boy falls out of the open window.
Leyla redesigns the cake to a new shape, wiping out any signs of the little boy’s existence from the kitchen. She then takes the cake to her guests

  • Arghavan Heydareslam
    Director
  • Arghavan Heydareslam
    Writer
  • Soroush Hazrati
    Producer
  • Arghavan Heidareslam
    Producer
  • Marjan Sadeghi
    Key Cast
    "Leila"
  • Soroush Hazrati
    Director of Photography
  • Soroush Hazrati
    Editor
  • Project Type:
    Short
  • Genres:
    Drama
  • Runtime:
    13 minutes
  • Completion Date:
    September 26, 2019
  • Production Budget:
    1,400 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    Iran, Islamic Republic of
  • Country of Filming:
    Iran, Islamic Republic of
  • Language:
    Persian
  • Shooting Format:
    .dng
  • Aspect Ratio:
    1: 2.35
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    Yes
  • Student Project:
    Yes
  • Vienna shorts festival
    Vienna
    Austria
    Official selection
  • Carrousel International du Film de Rimouski
    Quebec
    Canada
    Official Selection
  • Tehran International Film Festival
    Tehran
    Iran, Islamic Republic of
    Official Selection
  • Nahal short film festival
    Tehran
    Iran, Islamic Republic of
    won the Special Jury Prize
Distribution Information
  • Soroush Hazrati
    Distributor
    Country: Iran, Islamic Republic of
    Rights: All Rights
Director Biography - Arghavan Heydareslam

Born in 1997, Arghavan Heydareslam is doing her final year in Film at Soore university of Tehran, Iran. She participated in directing workshops by renowned independent filmmaker Shahram Mokri and editing workshops by Haydeh Safiyari and Sepideh Abdolvahab.

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Director Statement

Film has always been a complex medium to me. A medium that takes years and sometimes more than a lifetime for its potentials to be discovered by one. A concept that needs to be conveyed through sounds and images. A thing that is present in the room, can’t be seen but is felt. Hidden feelings that might not even be recognised by the film characters themselves. We experience something through a film that lasts as long as cinema’s lifetime but it could never exist before cinema’s birth. We can never be the characters but also cannot be outside of the film. A first hand experience, encountered through images and a sense of sympathy.
Perhaps my biggest drive for making “don’t touch anything” was to challenge this medium in order to convey an internal notion. An internal notion that impacts one’s surrounding gradually and makes the outside similar to the inside.