است (Is)

Mahoor, a 16-year-old girl who just moved to Tehran in the middle of the semester, enters this new school and forms a deep and intimate friendship with the best student of the class. They form a relationship that begins to attract a lot of attention from other students and the school board. To create this project, Parnia Shams worked with 7 girls recently out of high school. Her style is minimalist: it seems that little happens, but everything is in the details. We see them in class talking to each other, about the forbidden books hidden in their backpack, and weaving a story that is both everyday and exceptional. We hear the girls in conversation with the teacher or the direction of the school. These authority figures, although present, are unseen and unheard, yet we can follow the dialogues from what the girls say.

است (“Is”) is thus a game of full and empty, in which one must fill in what is not said or cannot be said, and in which Parnia Shams embodies the feeling of being controlled by an invisible power. She crafts a hyperrealistc yet magical fresco depicting the importance of the school as a place of learning, not just of notions, but of sisterhood and solidarity.