Terrestrial Verses

Terrestrial Verses is a sharply comic exploration of life under modern-day authoritarianism in Iran, told through nine spare, vividly staged vignettes that move roughly from birth to death. Each episode puts a single petitioner at the center of a fixed camera frame as they negotiate seemingly banal bureaucratic rituals—choosing a name for a newborn, graduating from grade school, getting a driver's license, applying for a job, seeking approval for a film script—while an authority figure speaks from just beyond the frame in practiced doublespeak. The film mines the absurdities and small humiliations of everyday survival with a dry wit that turns routine encounters into illuminating moral parables.

Shot in static takes that emphasize ritual and repetition, the movie uses minimalistic mise-en-scène and precise performances to reveal how language and procedure are used to normalize power. Its restrained humor and formal clarity make the compromises and creative evasions of ordinary people both relatable and quietly subversive, inviting viewers to laugh at the contradictions while recognizing the human cost of living by another's rules.