ON TENDING: A WATCHLIST
Films have always played a central role in how we decode our conditioning.
As we continue exploring the garden as both metaphor and method, we've found ourselves returning to a handful of films. Not films about gardens in the literal sense, but films that understand the garden as a way of moving through the world: a practice of care, patience, memory, endurance, and tending to what continues to grow despite difficult conditions.
Consider the following a devotional collage; an accumulation of films and overheard voices that continue to shape the way we think.
Abbas Kiarostami, Taste of Cherry (1997)
A meditation on death, companionship, and the quiet possibility that choosing to remain alive is itself an act of faith.
Dariush Mehrjui, The Cow (1969)
A timeless portrait of grief, identity, and the fragile bonds between people, animals, and the worlds they inhabit.
Sohrab Shahid Saless, Still Life (1974)
A quiet meditation on waiting, endurance, and the dignity of lives shaped by slow repetition.
Dariush Mehrjui, The Pear Tree (1998)
A garden of memory where love, loss, and creative longing continue to grow long after they have passed.
Nasser Taghvai, Captain Khorshid (1987)
A southern portrait of resilience, where survival is shaped by the sea, shifting borders, and impossible choices.
Marva Nabili, The Sealed Soil (1977)
A haunting reflection on silence, refusal, and the quiet persistence of a woman determined to live on her own terms.
Iraj Karimi, The Gardens of Kandelous (2004)
A meditation on gardens as living archives, where memory, landscape, and care become inseparable.
Abbas Kiarostami, The Wind Will Carry Us (1999)
A lesson in slowing down, paying attention, and trusting that the deepest transformations happen almost imperceptibly.
Forough Farrokhzad, The House Is Black (1962)
A radical act of looking that finds beauty, tenderness, and dignity where others only see despair.
This research is part of عزیزم، دنیا گلستون میشه یک روز / ‘My dear, one day the world will bloom into a garden’, conceived by Yalda Bidshahri for the ROSVÂ Summer 2026 Guest Curator Residency.
