IFFR 2025
Sunshine Express | Tiger Competition
A film by Amirali Navaee

Vanja Kaludjercic, iffr.com
February 2025

An exercise in role-playing reinforces the restrictive nature of everyday life in Iranian society.

Sunshine Express, directed by Amirali Navaee, has been nominated for the prestigious Tiger Award at the 2025 International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR).

Amirali Navaee returns to the festival after participating in 2021 with the short Silence. His Sunshine Express is 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.

The film follows a group of contestants participating in a surreal role-playing game aboard a fake train journey. As the game escalates, the contestants discover its dark psychological underpinnings, reflecting the control exerted by totalitarian systems.



Participants assigned a specific character in a role-playing game undertake a fictional train journey to an island, in order to win a cash prize, only for the competition to become a microcosm of the limitations they experience in their real lives.

The competitors in an unnamed role-playing game arrive at a departure area where an inspector checks their ID and informs them of the character they are to play before they board a fake train journeying to the fictional island of Hermia. To win, they must remain in character and fulfil any tasks they have been set. But as the train departs, some contestants begin to suspect that the game is more than it seems, and what appeared to be a soundstage construct transforms into something unsettlingly real, with its true destination unknown.

Amirali Navaee’s Sunshine Express is a sumptuous allegory, examining how totalitarian systems sustain themselves through collective complicity. Navaee combines this with the competitive elements of a reality game show and more than a little kafka to create a world that reflects on the lives of the people playing the characters. The theatrical role-play offers no freedom, only heightened entrapment, as contestants navigate a world where the notion of choice is an illusion and coercion is not always imposed by force, but through psychological and emotional manipulation. In a world ruled by fear, Navaee’s increasingly taut drama suggests that even the virtuous can be driven to perform the cruellest acts.

– Vanja Kaludjercic, iffr.com

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In "Sunshine Express" a diverse group of individuals sign a contract to take part in a reality show. They board a decorative train placed in a studio, bound for Hermia, the mythical land of dreams. Each passenger is assigned a unique role, which they must uphold until they reach Hermia. They are obliged to remain in their roles throughout the journey, guided by the voice of the show director. Each player has a unique mission to accomplish. As the train advances, passengers navigate their roles, confronting personal conflicts and hidden truths. The enigmatic journey to Hermia becomes a metaphor for their struggles and aspirations, culminating in a quest for redemption under the pressure of the totalitarian show's strict rules. Selected in IFFR Rotterdam Film Festival 2025 in the prestigious Tiger Competition. —AmirAli Navaee