Bridge OF Sleep | Pol-e Khaab (2016)
Tehran-born writer-director Oktay Baraheni's first feature
(thecinematheque.ca)

According to a general rule, humans, even sinners, are too simple and simple to imagine, and we are ourselves too.

Like most of youth in civil society, Shahab also tries to form his future. On the threshold of marriage, his life faces an accident and it eventually leads to a huge change.

Tehran-born writer-director Oktay Baraheni studied film at York University in Toronto before returning home to pursue his career. 



His first feature, the social drama Bridge of Sleep, freely adapts Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment and transposes it to contemporary Iran.

Shahab (Saed Soheili), a young man about to get married, enters a business deal with a friend, hoping it will secure his financial future. When the deal goes sour, Shahab finds himself out of money and on the hook for a high-interest debt.

Pursued by creditors, under pressure from his fiancé (Anahita Afshar), and without a legal way out of his woes, he turns to unorthodox methods.

Akbar Zanjanpour plays Shabab’s schoolteacher father, while actor and filmmaker Hooman Seyedi also appears.

Cast: Saeed Soheili, Anahita Afshar, Shahin Taslimi, Hooman Seyedi, Akbar Zanjanpoor, Hesam Shojai