‘The Vanishing Point’ review: How Iran’s 1979 revolution unleashed generational trauma in one family

Dir: Bani Khoshnoudi. Iran/US/France. 2025. 103 mins

Remembrance becomes an act of resistance in The Vanishing Point, Bani Khoshnoudi’s deeply personal documentary which revisits her family history to address the collective trauma of generations of Iranians dealing with the aftershocks of the Islamic Revolution in 1979. A wide-ranging, sometimes discursive work builds into a passionate cry for freedom that should attract further festival interest after winning the jury prize in the Burning Lights section of Vision Du Reel.

The resistance of a cousin four decades ago burns again in a modern generation.

It is more than fifteen years since Khoshnoudi left Iran in the wake of her film The Silent Majority Speaks (2009) being banned. The Vanishing Point is infused with an exile’s nostalgia and longing for connection to their homeland. She concentrates on everyday objects that create pathways to her family history, focusing on static shots of a suitcase filled with papers and photos, scrapbooks and albums, empty rooms and deserted homes. Traces of the past are like the grimy outline on a wall where a painting once hung. 

These images of bare walls, cracked plaster and empty tables juxtapose Khoshnoudi’s conversations with her elderly relatives to suggest parallels with Chantal Akerman’s equally intimate final documentary  No Home Movie (2015). Footage from 2009 sees Khoshnoudi in conversation with her aunt Farideh Mayel as they gaze at old photographs and volumes of newspaper clippings. A photograph from 1947 captures Farideh in all her youthful glamour and is contrasted with a tale of her skirmish with the morality police more than six decades later.

Khoshnoudi believes it is essential to fight against the silencing of the past and yet her own family never mentions the fate of her mother’s younger cousin. Elements of her story are pieced together throughout the film as we learn that she was just 27 in 1988 when she was arrested by the authorities and incarcerated in Evin Prison. She was never seen again and her parents were presented with a plastic bag of her meagre belongings alongside a warning to say nothing. The family would never speak about it and Khoshnoudi’s desire to know more and keep her memory alive is indicative of countless families who have lost loved ones over the past half century.

Editor Claire Atherton weaves together a wealth of home movies, still images and raw footage from sources in Iran. They convey a sense of the surface normality of everyday life as people are stuck in traffic, visit brightly lit shops or bustle along busy city streets. Nobody seems to talk to anyone, underlining Khoshnoudi’s point that in Iran “ we cannot breathe the same way out of the house as we do indoors.”

The material is often starkly presented to emphasis its edgy immediacy. There is very little in the way of context, narration or music to accompany the visuals.  Footage of the riots after the 2009 election result becomes the starting point for a more focused, emotionally charged reflection of unrest in modern Iran. Khoshnoudi uses anonymous phone footage from the past decade to salute those brave individuals who have defied the regime, chanting ’Death To The Dictator’ or spraypainting walls with slogans like Death To Khamenei or Nothing Can Erase Blood. A good deal of the hope that Khoshnoudi finds in recent events is the defiance of women, especially in the protests that followed the death of Mahsa Amini in September 2022. Her ability to trace the unacknowledged connections in her country’s history mean that time seems to fold in on itself as the resistance of a cousin four decades ago burns again in a modern generation.