Sohrab Shahid Saless, a pioneering figure of the Iranian New Wave, developed a distinct cinematic experience of image and time; a cinema woven not from fiction or metaphor, but from the cold, repetitive reality of everyday life.
In the 1970s, he created a wholly personal and minimalist language by eschewing traditional Iranian cinematic themes and structures. Long takes, static frames, sparse dialogue, and the use of non-professional actors all contribute to a framework that transforms the viewer from a mere observer of events into a participant in life itself.
In his films, music yields to the sounds of life: the wind, dogs howling, sheep bells, train whistles, crows cawing, dishes being washed, and the murmur of the sea. These seemingly simple sounds, in the absence of emotive melody, form the poetic soul of his cinema. Silence in his films has a voice; a silence that emanates from the heart of reality and breathes life into the image.
After making several short films with a local and indigenous atmosphere, primarily in the landscape of Bandar Torkaman, Shahid Saless created three feature films in the early 1970s from the same unique perspective: “A Simple Event” (1973), “Still Life” (1974), and “Far from Home” (1975). Each of these films, in addition to emphasizing Shahid Saless’s personal cinematic language, received international acclaim and paved the way for Iranian cinema to enter major global film festivals.
Shahid Saless’s artistic career was crowned with numerous prestigious international honors, including the OCIC Jury Prize and the FIPRESCI Prize at the Berlin International Film Festival, as well as the Silver Bear for “Still Life”. His subsequent film was selected for the International Competition at Berlin, where it contended for the Golden Bear. He also received the International Critics’ Award at the Tehran International Film Festival.
Where Nothing Happens—and Everything Does
“A Simple Event” was Shahid Saless’s first feature film, following a series of short documentaries that had received considerable critical acclaim. The film tells the story of a boy named Mohammad, who lives in a small, impoverished seaside town and spends his days alternating between work and school. In his world, there are no dreams, no laughter, no games, no imagination. Through this uneventfulness, Shahid Saless conveys the feeling of loss.
One of the most poetic moments in the film comes when Mohammad, after his mother’s death, sits silently by the window and bites into a sandwich. On the surface, nothing happens: there is no music, no tears, no reaction. There is only Mohammad, a cold light, and a window opening onto the courtyard. From outside comes the sound of children playing — a lively sound that contrasts with Mohammad’s inner stillness. The camera remains fixed and unjudging, as if time itself had ceased to move. Within this quiet, the most poetic form of sorrow is born: a sadness that arises not from the display of emotion, but from the heart of reality.
The Art of the Unspoken
Shahid Saless returned to the silent and forgotten individuals in “Still Life” after “A Simple Event”. This time, however, it is not youth but old age and exhaustion that occupy his gaze. If the eyes of a lonely child in the first film were filled with loss and sorrow, in this one, repetition and stillness become the inevitable fate of man. Saless portrays the life of a man approaching the end of his working years, facing retirement and a creeping sense of meaninglessness. Yet for him, retirement is not freedom—it is merely a continuation of the same cold, mechanical order of the past: a life without hope or event.
In “Still Life”, time moves like a never-ending train in the background—yet it has no destination. The aging railway guard breathes and exists within the steady rhythm of wheels and whistles. In these motionless, rhythmic frames, the sound of the train becomes the symphony of life: a wordless music that reveals the most poetic dimension of Saless’s cinema.
In one of the film’s most beautiful moments, the old man quietly sips tea in his modest, bare room as a train slowly passes outside the window. There is no dialogue, no action—yet this moment captures the very essence of life: his stillness against the movement of the world, a metaphor for humanity facing time itself. The old man stands suspended between past and future, caught at a crossroads where everything moves except him.
“Still Life” can be read as a visual meditation on stillness and the exhaustion of meaning, yet for Saless, this conclusion is not bitter. He finds lyrical order in repetition, and quiet beauty in immobility. Just as motionless objects in still-life paintings hold the pulse of life, the silent man in his film embodies existence itself—quiet, uneventful, yet filled with meaning.
Through a fixed camera, slow rhythms, and authentic sounds, Shahid Saless renders time visible and turns existence into poetry. This experience not only shapes his unique cinematic language but also introduces and defines Iranian cinema on a global stage. His films remind us that beauty and poetry reside within life itself—in its smallest pauses and silences, not in noise or spectacle.
