Massih Parsaei's feature debut, "Lovers Sleep Alone," will premiere at the San Sebastian Film Festival, where it arrives as an intimate portrait of a queer Iranian man rebuilding his existence in Berlin. The film, running 87 minutes and performed in Persian, follows Iman as he constructs a life organized around what is no longer there - his family, his homeland, and any version of himself that was fully known to others.
Pooyesh Frozandeh stars as Iman, a caregiver for an elderly man who also puts in shifts at a truck wash. His days and nights blur through the German capital, where he seeks out both intimacy and isolation, sometimes in the same breath. A recurring sexual encounter with a man in a park forms one anchor of his routine; invented stories fill the space where a more conventional life might have been. Parsaei's camera trails Iman along the city's endless paths, gathering stray fragments from strangers' lives as they drift past - a chorus of other existences that never quite merge with his own.
The equilibrium Iman has managed to build is disturbed when his cousin Maneli, played by Ava Darvishi, arrives from Tehran. Her visit pulls at the seams of the identity he has carefully assembled, forcing what he left behind back into view. It is a narrative turn that promises to test the emotional defenses Iman has spent the film maintaining.
A Story of Absence and the City
Parsaei, making his first feature, treats Berlin less as a backdrop than as a participant in Iman's solitude. The city's scale and anonymity allow Iman to disappear into routine, but they also expose the limits of that strategy. His work as a caregiver places him in constant proximity to another person's vulnerability, while the truck wash and the park encounters offer something more transactional and controlled. The film's title itself suggests the paradox at its center: a man surrounded by people yet sleeping alone, chasing closeness while holding it at arm's length.
The overview describes Iman as someone who has "built his life in Berlin around absence" - from his family, from Iran, from being known. That framing positions the film within a broader tradition of exile cinema, but Parsaei's approach appears to favor accumulation over declaration, letting the weight of Iman's displacement register through the textures of daily life rather than through explicit statement.
An Ensemble Anchored by Frozandeh
Frozandeh carries the lead role of Iman, with Darvishi as the visiting cousin whose presence unsettles the status quo. The supporting cast includes Marcel Kohler, Wolfgang Webeto, Ann-Kristin Reyels, and Florens Schmidt. Details about their specific roles have not been disclosed. The film is an 87-minute production, notably lean for a feature that spans as much emotional and geographical territory as this one seems to cover.
"Lovers Sleep Alone" enters the festival circuit without a confirmed theatrical release date, and its TMDb rating currently sits at zero, reflecting the absence of any audience data prior to its premiere. San Sebastian has become a reliable launching ground for first-time directors with distinctive voices, and Parsaei's selection there signals that programmers see something worth championing in his approach.
A Festival Season with Something to Say
The film arrives at a moment when queer cinema and stories of displacement are finding renewed urgency on the international festival circuit. What distinguishes "Lovers Sleep Alone" from other entries in that conversation is its refusal to resolve Iman's contradictions. He is not presented as a figure to be pitied or celebrated, but as a man navigating the ordinary mechanics of survival in a city that neither embraces nor rejects him outright. The invented stories he tells himself suggest a creative impulse that has outlived the structures that once supported it.
Maneli's visit from Tehran provides the film's clearest dramatic hinge, but the overview implies that her arrival does not so much shatter Iman's world as reveal its existing fault lines. What returns with her is not simply nostalgia or grief, but the question of who Iman was before he became the person Berlin allowed him to be.
For audiences at San Sebastian, "Lovers Sleep Alone" offers a chance to encounter a new filmmaker working in a register that prizes restraint and observation. Whether it finds distribution beyond the festival circuit remains to be seen, but its subject matter and its director's willingness to sit with discomfort suggest a debut worth noting as the fall festival season unfolds.
Source: Hollywood Reporter
