Why Without Her is a Sick Joke?

By Carwan Dourandich Originally published in Mah-e Kamel-e Honar Quarterly, Issue 1

Without Her is Arian Vazirdaftari's feature-length debut, which was nominated in the Best First Film category at the 40th Fajr Film Festival. However, it did not win, as the award went to The Situation of Mehdi. The film's central narrative follows a woman named Roya, whose ordinary life - filled with personal struggles familiar to all of us - is thrown into chaos when she encounters a nameless, unidentified girl who later takes the name Ziba. Ziba might be a con artist, but what's strange is that she doesn't even attempt to steal anything. Though she successfully keeps the mystery of her past and identity intact, Roya finds it increasingly difficult to accept her presence. Meanwhile, the young woman becomes more and more drawn to adopting Roya's role. She does not want to possess Roya's belongings - she simply takes over her life. After offering Ziba shelter, money, and trust, Roya is left in shock when she realizes that Ziba has stolen her very existence. The film poses an essential question: Are there stories where we question our own identity to the point of confusion and uncertainty while still finding them plausible in real life? The story of Without Her belongs to the realm of fantasy - it unfolds in a world of illusion rather than reality. In other words, it cannot exist in real life. It is not science fiction either, because sci-fi concepts often have the potential to become reality. Whether the film is fantasy or sci-fi, its realistic production design leads the audience to search for its meaning within their own reality - only to fail, because the film is, at its core, decisively unrealistic. If there is one significant theme in Without Her, it is the idea of accidental displacement. The characters, initially resistant, are gradually forced into submission, accepting new identities as if it were inevitable. First Ziba, then Roya, and finally Arash - all of them are stripped of their previously accepted identities and are compelled to assume new ones. In fact, every character in the film - from children to adults - has their true self hidden beneath layers of deception. Everything is a performance. Everyone pretends to be something they are not. Each character revises and rewrites themselves for the public and for one another. What could be worse than a relationship where two people are supposed to love each other, yet with the random arrival of a third party, they discard their commitments and abandon each other with unsettling ease? The proposed solution in Without Her is cruel. Babak and the others decide to play along. Babak no longer recognizes Roya as the woman he married. He is drawn to Ziba because of her social charm, intelligence, and fluency in Danish. Ziba's supposed family chooses not to acknowledge her. A man whose wife has disappeared decides to replace Hanieh with Roya. Strangely enough, even his young son seems to have no objections to this arrangement. But perhaps the cruelest part of all is that, as viewers, we don't even know whose nightmare we are trapped in - Roya's? Ziba's? Or Babak's and everyone else's? Had Roya actively questioned Ziba's identity, the film could have transformed into an engaging puzzle - one where viewers must pick up on subtle clues scattered throughout the narrative. However, the film doesn't give the audience much opportunity to play detective. From a technical standpoint, one of the most striking aspects of the film is its editing. Editor Mehdi Sa'di abruptly cuts the first half of the film and later its closing sequence to black. This sharp transition effectively represents a deeper rupture in the world of the film. I'm not saying Without Her is a complete disaster or entirely indefensible - some of its ideas are intriguing. But the film ultimately lacks a clear identity. It does not know what it is, and it simply does not work. At first, the audience is engaged, following the mystery with curiosity, wondering: Is Roya the delusional one? Is Ziba the problem? Or is Babak hiding something even worse? However, this initial intrigue quickly turns into frustration. Eventually, the audience finds themselves thinking: I refuse to buy into this madness. And honestly, they wouldn't be wrong. The film's realistic aesthetic does not align with its fundamentally unrealistic story. Without Her presents a ridiculous world where copies replace originals, and characters find themselves in homes devoid of honesty. The writer tries to turn the film into a psychological clinic, but I refuse to label any of the characters as "psychotic" because that would imply the need to search for logic within a fundamentally illogical story. This is why I disagree with applying psychiatric labels to the characters. At the same time, their behavior and decisions do not align with any coherent structure - neither with real life as we know it nor with any established framework of storytelling. This film is a sick joke. That is a statement I can agree with.