Thirteen-year-old Samaneh gazes helplessly over a field being blanketed in heavy snow. She has come hunting with her father, and unless she captures seven rare birds with golden wings within the given time, she will be forced to marry against her will. Dreams of the Wild Oaks tells the story of Samaneh, racing against time to protect her freedom within the closed and oppressive traditions of the Bakhtiari tribe in southwestern Iran. For Marjan Khosravi, who grew up in this community, Samaneh is a reflection of her own mother’s past, who was forced to marry at age 12; for Samaneh, Khosravi embodies the future she dreams of. The girl vows to study hard and become a doctor or teacher and one day go to Paris. Khosravi responds to that dream by capturing the moments Samaneh’s face lights up. Can Samaneh and her father break free from the yoke of ancient traditions of forced marriage and blood sacrifice? In the final scene, the camera lingers on the father as he teaches his daughter how to load her gun so that she can hunt on her own. His willingness to prepare her for independence is hope.
She’s an Iranian documentary director whose work has focused mainly on women′s rights and social issues. Her first mid-length documentary, The Snow Calls (2020), was selected for the Student Competition at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), and another short, Mrs. Iran′s Husband (2023), won the Best International Short Documentary Award at Hot Docs and Best Short Film and the Cinema Network Award at the Fribourg International Film Festival. Her first feature, Requiem for a Tribe (2024), which received support from the Hot Docs fund, was selected for Competition at the Shanghai International Film Festival.
From Busan International Film Festival 2026, No. 31
