What inspired this film?

The first was a joke my high school literature teacher used to tell. He was a young poet who profoundly influenced me and my path as an artist. The joke was long, not really funny, and almost existential: a white-winged horse enters a little town seeking a job, only to hear the same response everywhere: “Welcome to our town, but we can’t hire you, you’re a white-winged horse.”

The punchline, if you could call it that, was quietly disappointing: unable to find work, the horse simply flies away to the next town. But the essence of the joke was never the ending. It was the repetition, the absurdity, and the defamiliarization that unsettled you as a listener. It subverted the expectation of humor and instead left you with a strange sense of displacement.

I still remember telling my dear friend and cinematographer, Soroush, “What if we turned this joke into a film?” That sparked it all.
The second inspiration was deeply personal.

Growing up in Iran, my youth centered on one pivotal question: stay or leave? Leaving was always present as a possibility or as an inevitability. Ironically, I myself left soon after making the film. But before that, I watched friends, family members, and loved ones depart, one by one, powerless to stop them.

While I was writing the script, a very dear person in my life told me “I’m leaving the country.” That moment shifted the film into deeply personal territory. The white-winged horse became a reflection of that helplessness, the feeling of being shaped by circumstances beyond your control, of either having to leave your home or remain behind and watch others disappear from your life.