Tehranto

In Toronto, lively music, intricate textiles, and vibrant colours paint an unlikely story of love and family when Badi and Sharon, two young students with very different upbringings in a divided Iranian community, accidentally fall in love. These days, there are two types of Iranian immigrants – those who left Iran before the Revolution, and those who left after. Sharon is a Richmond Hill artist, impartial to her Persian culture, forced into real estate by her money-driven parents. Badi is a brash, newly immigrated med-student from a small town in Iran, drowning in his contempt for assimilated Iranians, branding them “traitors to their race”. After Badi and Sharon cross paths, everything changes. A magnetic attraction pulls them together, but the collision of their two worlds within Toronto challenges them to rethink their own paths as individuals, with social expectations pressuring them on one hand, and selfish desires on the other. (Cinequest Festival)