THE STRAIT

Sometimes you try a lot and don’t reach your goal. Sometimes you wish a lot and recede from your dreams. There is no guaranteed way for you to make sure you will reach all of your dreams. I remember that, when I didn’t get what I wanted, the elderly, who I believe was more religious, would say to me, “Don’t worry! It was destiny” or “why are you sad? There must be good to this.” A friend introduced me to the law of attraction years ago. I used to repeat a wish many times and finally reach my goal. Surprisingly, it was almost a fast and resultant process. It worked and gave some half results, and then it stopped working.
Anyway, there was always a contradiction in my whole life. I thought that it was possible to reach happiness by wishing, repeating, and thinking about dreams, or our destiny is already determined, and we cannot fight against it, and we should surrender.
Although the script of this film, The Strait, is entirely a multisided story about relationships of friends, family members, and social dilemmas that children and youth face, the framework of this movie is based on the law of attraction that I already mentioned above. This was my motivating question for writing this script.

The subject of The Strait is my main concern. I am concerned that innocent kids lose their innocence to achieve things that are too far away. It destroys family relationships and adds to deprivation, and others can abuse them. It also creates lots of difficulties for children. The Strait is a story about morals, and Ahmad and Reza are the main characters. Their story reminds us of this old saying, “not everything that glitters is not gold.
As we all know, regardless of the country, culture, and minorities, some people only seek deception and fraud (whether in a private way as promises of fast success or in a public way as unbearable political promises) to manipulate innocent people who are hoping to hear about their dreams. Therefore, The Strait is far from repetitive stereotypes and tips. It is a wake-up call for society, especially parents, to keep their children away from these dangers.
Today more than ever, because of the terrible economy, unbelievable inflation, and devaluation of the national currency in Iran, we witness people lose all of their money to fraudsters, liars, and dream sellers in the treasure hunt field to run away from problems and financial pressures. They go so far that, in addition to losing all of their savings, they endanger their own body and life. Unfortunately, even children and teens are not safe from this danger, and there are many situations that put the children of society in danger. From time to time, we hear the sad news that bad things happen to them. Moreover, the history of Iran, the beliefs, old stories about buried treasures, and popular superstitions in the depth of society helped to create this wave of behaviors.

The script of The Strait is about teenagers, and each has their struggles and motives, and comes from different classes and tries to reach happiness. Ahmad’s family has a reasonably normal financial status. With the dream of being independent of his father (Hashem Dada), he starts his adventure. He is a dreamer and full of confidence, but the deep emotional gap between his father and him and losing his mother are the main reasons he starts this adventure. On the other hand, Reza has a bad financial state. He barely manages to keep the roof on the family’s head because of the unpaid rent. His motives are survival and helping his family, and these motives follow him on his path. But his path finds a new direction with the appearance of Kamal. And finally, he hurts them both emotionally and physically in an irredeemable way.
Finally, I want the audience to feel and follow the characters as they watch the film. And I hope that they believe the story and the characters. The main factor that I am looking for is understanding the feelings of the characters by the audience. I want them to bring parts of their personality and life and follow them till the end of the film. Nothing would make me happier than this.