SYNOPSIS
An experimental essay set in Daria's nocturnal garden, where blooming flowers intersect with serial crime scenes. Using archival Iranian cinema footage, botanical imagery, and minimal narration, the film juxtaposes personal desire with patriarchal violence. In fragments of color, shadow, and silence, forbidden attachments emerge, revealing how intimacy endures in secret spaces. This work is a poetic meditation on memory, gendered violence, and the resilience of a love that persists even in darkness.
REVIEW
UK-based Iranian filmmaker Maryam Tafakory has long built her career unearthing hidden meanings in pre- and post-revolution Iranian film archives. In Iran, while many subjects are forbidden, queer sexuality sits at the top of the list. Drawing on an extensive trove of film clips, Tafakory crafts “impossible” films from what remains. Her latest, Daria’s Night Flowers, turns its gaze toward lesbian desire. The film follows Daria, a writer who has just completed a novel about a girl named Blue. In her story, a magical plant devours women unsettled by their illicit longings; its leaves are then used by doctors as part of so-called conversion therapies.
From this premise, Tafakory assembles scenes that bristle with a quiet, coded anxiety: a dead leaf plucked from a potted plant, the clatter of a glass on a tray, the scrape of a dish being washed. Weaving together fragments from dozens of Persian-language films—spanning classics and obscurities—she fashions a shadow narrative of jealousy, hidden ambition, and repression.
DIRECTOR'S NOTE
When I was researching post-revolution Iranian cinema, the plethora of scenes of women taking sedatives or attempting to end their lives with medication was not a surprise. I was very young when I noticed my mother’s reliance on sedatives. When watching some of these films, I could see glimpses of my mother and hear her words. Married at the age of 18 and prevented from finishing school, self-medicating was the only control over her body she could exercise. Drawing from films where women are denied agency over their lives, this film reimagines a story of vengeance for survival.
