\\ About Sunshine Express

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Sunshine Express is the debut feature of Iranian writer-director Amirali Navaee and a production of the Distorted Pictures. Deliberately departing from the tradition of social realism that has come to define Iranian cinema on the international stage, the film uses an immersive and poetic cinematic language to explore the essence of totalitarianism: how ordinary individuals, through their everyday performances and compliances, collectively construct the very structure that allows a totalitarian power to rule. The empire is not imposed from above alone. We build it together.

Set aboard a fake train bound for the fictional paradise of Hermia, the film follows a group of participants in what appears to be a reality show role-playing game. Each is assigned a character — prisoner, judge, police officer, singer, train manager — and must remain in character to win a cash prize. But as the game unfolds, the boundaries between performance and reality, coercion and consent, begin to dissolve. The theatrical role-play offers no freedom, only heightened entrapment.
The film was developed and completed before the recent escalations in the region, yet carries an unsettling sense of anticipation. Many viewers and critics have described it as feeling prophetic — a quality that has deepened its resonance at each successive international screening.

Genre: Thriller, Drama, Fantasy
Year: 2025
Duration: 98 minutes

"A sumptuous allegory, examining how totalitarian systems sustain themselves through collective complicity. In a world ruled by fear, Navaee's increasingly taut drama suggests that even the virtuous can be driven to perform the cruellest acts."

— International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR)

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Critical Reception

"A week after seeing it, I am still mulling over Sunshine Express — it is great art."

— Andy Howell, Film Threat — 9/10

Sunshine Express has been covered by the Hollywood Reporter and the New York Times, and has drawn sustained critical attention across its international festival circuit.

Andy Howell, writing for Film Threat following the film's Santa Barbara International Film Festival screening, awarded the film 9 out of 10 and placed it in the company of Ingmar Bergman, Charlie Kaufman and David Lynch, calling it "a magnificently weird and challenging film" that belongs to "the vanishingly small category of bold movies that don't make logical sense as much as metaphorical sense."

Howell wrote that the film's central achievement is inseparable from its form: the Kafkaesque world explores totalitarianism not from the outside but from within the logic of complicity, where "people are forced to play a role, performing for others on the outside, even if their inner lives may be dramatically different." He described the film's final shot as "a curveball for the ages" and concluded: "A week after seeing it, I am still mulling over Sunshine Express — it is great art."

The New York Times profiled the director in the context of a new wave of Iranian filmmakers working outside the conventions of political documentary realism, noting that Navaee wanted to express "something more complex and less overtly political than other Iranian films." The piece contextualised Sunshine Express as a counterpoint to the dominant international image of Iranian cinema.

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Festivals & Awards

World Premiere — Tiger Competition, International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) 2025
Official Selection — SXSW (South by Southwest) 2025
Best Feature Film — Oslo Film Festival 2025
Official Selection — Santa Barbara International Film Festival 2026
Official Selection — Fantaspoa 2026
Best Fiction Feature — El Ojo Rojo Film Festival 2026

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About the Director

Amirali Navaee was born in 1982 in Iran, during the Iran–Iraq war. Influenced by ancient Iranian poets including Rumi, and by a deep engagement with art and cinema history, he grew up as a stage performer, choreographer, and visual artist, working across dance, video installation, and film. His work has been presented at international festivals including IFFR, the Berlin Talent Campus, Venice, Oberhausen, IETM, and Body Talks Zurich, where he won the Talent Award at the Intervideo Festival and Best Director at Eastern Breeze Canada.

Sunshine Express is his debut feature film, shot in a warehouse in Tehran on a small budget, largely financed by friends. At the time of writing, he is on a fellowship at the Cité internationale des arts in Paris.

His cinema deliberately moves away from social realism and toward a language that is poetic, mythic, and formally bold. "The cinema that comes out of my country these days is only about sadness," he has said. "But we don't just live like that."

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Production

Director / Writer: Amirali Navaee
Producers: Sina Sharbafi · Babak Parham (Executive)
Production Company: Distorted Pictures
Director of Photography: Hamed Hosseini Sangari
Editor: Roozbeh Moharrer
Music: Ava Rasti
Sound Designer: Amirhossein Ghassemi
Production Designer: Farzin Kashefi
Costume Designer: Sara Fallah
Colour Grading: Farhad Ghodsi
Visual Effects: Sahar Manouchehri

Cast: Babak Karimi · Mohammad Aghebati · Mahvash Afsharpanah · Sajad Hamidian . Kiana Kermanian · Hassan Nouri · Amirhossein Hosseini · Sam Nakhai . Shayesteh Sajadi · Azadeh Seifi · Roozbeh Mehr · Ayhan Shayegan

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Press

Sunshine Express

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For This Director, Iranian Films Can Be About More Than Despair

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Iranian Director on ‘Sunshine Express,’ Shakespeare, Westerns, and the Dangers of Role-Playing

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Sunshine Express (9/10)

For distribution enquiries and link to screener please contact:

Amirali Navaee — Writer & Director, Sunshine Express

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