BARAFTOO
WITHIN THE SUN
Sepideh Jamshidi Nejad / Iran (Islamic Republic of) / 2025 / 28 min / Colour
Italian premiere
We are in a salt mine, though its location remains unknown. This nameless place in the mountains is mirrored by the anonymity of the six elderly women who work there. The sun reflects harshly on the slick, salt-bleached rock, blinding them. The heat is stifling. Season after season, the women wear down their bodies among the stone. Their faces are etched with time, their gazes seem to surrender to the burden of daily toil. The director chooses to portray them without words, drawing close to their presence and to the harshness of their work environment, transfiguring them through images—until they appear as stone themselves, fused with the light. The whiteness of the salt, absorbed into their very bones, finally gives way to a white snowfall—a gentle descent that seems to bring comfort, perhaps even release, from the labor that has shaped their bodies and their souls.
Sepideh Jamshidi Nejad
An Iranian director and documentary filmmaker, she lives in Tehran and studied Social Communication Sciences at Allameh Tabatabai University. She worked as a journalist, focusing primarily on women and cinema, and later in the creative departments of Iranian advertising agencies. Within the Sun (2025) is her debut film.
