The Vanishing Point by Bani Khoshnoudi is a deeply personal and political documentary that explores the traces of exile, family memory, and the violence of the Iranian regime, pushing the boundaries of conventional storytelling. The Iranian filmmaker and artist, who left her country in 1979 during the Islamic Revolution, creates a film that is not simply about her own story but about the collective history of the many who have been lost, whose existence was erased from public memory by state repression. Through a meticulous collection of visual material, including family photos, personal objects, and fragments of daily life in Tehran, Khoshnoudi intertwines private memories with public narratives of resistance and forced disappearances. Her camera, infused with an intimate gaze, captures scenes of the streets, street vendors, and the visual inscriptions of a city marked by fear and repression. The vanishing point in the title refers to a silenced pain, that of her cousin, who was executed during the 1988 purges in Iran, a story that has remained hidden for decades.
What distinguishes The Vanishing Point is the way Khoshnoudi uses editing to subvert the passivity of observation. Through her collaboration with editor Claire Atherton, the film takes the form of an accumulation of scattered materials, inviting us to confront the complex relationship between image and oblivion. The images, charged with palpable tension, not only document violence but also the effort to keep memory alive in the face of attempts to erase all traces of the past. The film opens a space for reflection on suffering and disappearance. By interspersing videos of recent protests, where Iranian women rise up against the regime, The Vanishing Point weaves a direct critique of the oppression that still persists in the country. The echo of the protests and images of resistance serve not only as testimony to a current struggle but as a cry for justice that demands to be heard beyond borders.
Khoshnoudi’s film is not just an exercise in memory, but a reflection on the act of filming as resistance. Through her images, the filmmaker confronts the void of official history, creating a work that, while centered on her personal experience, becomes an urgent call to action, to not be complacent in the face of injustice. In its final sequence, images of Iranian women waving their scarves in the streets resonate as an act of reclamation, a reminder that, although the past has been stolen from us, the future is still ours to claim.
