a body without a place

Pressured by his partner, Elijah undergoes a sex change operation in his home country of Iran. His powerful cousin Mela, who works in the oil industry, helps him go through this. For Elija, this is a survival strategy, as homosexuality and bisexuality are severely punished while gender reassignment is tolerated – transsexuality is considered a curable disease. But when his partner leaves him, Elija wants to get out of this new body, out of a family and a state that govern desire and belonging with force.

Together with friends Mela and Fanis, Elija sets off for Europe to see a surgeon who specializes in bionics. No longer wanting to have a body that is simply male or female, or subject to human limitations at all, Elijah seeks an organic and technological extension. Despite the real and effective yet invisible social boundaries and capitalist constraints.

Mehdi Moradpour creates a scenario with strong imagery and fast-paced language in which the atmospheres of cityscapes, seascapes, and dreamscapes invade bodies and suspend clear contours. Utopian and technological longings meet harsh laws, individuals in dissolution meet medical tribunals.