Zip
2023 · 15m · Canada
Directed by Ava Maria Safai
Tones: dark, melancholic, provocative
On her 16th birthday during the Woman, Life, Freedom movement, an Iranian-Canadian girl wakes to find a zipper sewn onto her mouth.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Iranian-Canadian teen wakes with a zipper sewn over her mouth during Woman Life Freedom — that's not metaphor, that's a knife. The image is good enough to forgive the obviousness.
Safai literalizing the Woman, Life, Freedom movement's silencing as a zipper sewn onto an Iranian-Canadian girl's mouth on her sixteenth birthday is the precise body-horror metaphor the political moment calls for, and Lanthimos is the correct comparison. A significant short.
14:33 with the zipper-on-mouth conceit literalizing political silencing — Ava Maria Safai timing this with Woman, Life, Freedom is making the body-horror argument carry actual stakes. 281K views in 3 months on ALTER confirms it registers.