Editorial

“Maybe There’s a War Going On Inside All of Us” Samira Hosseini, a graduate with a master’s degree in animation, is the creator of a work titled “Travelous” (Safarnak), which won an award at the previous edition of the Puyan Festival. It’s an intimate yet painful account of migration — of people caught swaying between […]

Review of the Animated Short “Pollination Season”: A Masquerade in the Garden — Nature’s Forced Dance In this review of the animated short “Pollination Season,” we examine a work that feels less like a narrative animation and more like a silent, miniature theatrical performance — one in which the oldest survival mechanism of nature (plant […]

In this review of “In the Last Years of Life,” we examine a work by Minasadat Ayatollahi — a tender yet moving account of the old wounds of “difference” and the long-lasting balm of “friendship.” The filmmaker takes us on a journey through a tunnel of time, back to a scorching summer noon in the […]

The short animation “Wander to Wonder,” directed by Nina Gantz, is a work that at first glance looks like an old, forgotten children’s show, but quickly turns into a profound drama about loyalty, loss, and survival. This review of “Wander to Wonder” shows that the film, rather than aiming to build a scary or disgusting […]

Tangible Dread: When Felt Breathes In this analysis of the animation “Bug”, we examine the short film created by Ali Masoumi — a work that goes beyond a purely formalist exercise to become a masterclass in “breathing life into the difficult.” This piece proves that stop-motion is not merely frame-by-frame photography, but the act of […]

The Iron Sisyphus in a Purgatory of Noise and Light In this review of the animation “Cycle”, we encounter a cold, bare-boned narrative of contemporary human loneliness, embodied in the form of a one-eyed robot. In this work, Mohammad Mehdi Hosseininejad takes us into the dark, damp back room of a space where time has […]

Neon Silence: When a Mouse Really Eats a Child’s Tongue The animation “Bougainvillea” is a raw depiction of a child’s mind caught in a barrage of words and idioms. In this work, Neda Sangtarash takes the viewer on a journey through the labyrinth of “memory, imagination, and nightmare.” The child narrator, in trying to make […]

The animation “Memory” is a digital elegy set in a space that smells of burnt oil and cold metal. In this work, Mirsepehr Khoobbin takes us to a dark, neon-lit future — a place where assembly lines endlessly create beings meant to be “flawless.” But catastrophe strikes when one of these beings develops the most […]

The animation “Chawk” is a work that, rather than following a linear narrative, invites the viewer into an “atmosphere” — one in which the boundary between the silver screen of cinema and the gray walls of the city gradually dissolves. In this piece, the creator, with exemplary command of visual language, has built a world […]

The animation “Crumpled” (Mochaleh) (directed by Mohammad Yaghoubi) tells the story of the conflict between “the creator’s doubt” and “the resilience of the creation.” The work opens with a brilliant premise: sometimes the greatest obstacle to the birth of a masterpiece is the artist himself. We see a designer trapped within the rigid confines of […]

Among the works presented at the Poyan Festival, Three Seconds, directed by Javad Azari, offers a humorous and satirical take on everyday human behavior. The film’s central idea is built around a familiar superstition or unwritten universal rule: the “three-second rule”—the belief that if food is picked up from the floor within three seconds, bacteria […]

The Boundary Between Reality and Dream in Maroot Maroot is not an animation made merely for entertainment; rather, it feels like an unfinished session of visual therapy. In this work, Zahra Azimi throws the audience without mediation into the dark corridors of a mind on the verge of collapse. Here, technique is no longer merely […]

Watching Noah The Hog Ripper is the experience of stepping into a nightmare that reeks of raw flesh and clotted blood. This is no ordinary stop-motion piece; it is a jolting statement on violence and nature’s revenge, executed with ruthless precision. Here, the director uses the medium of animation not to create sweet fantasies, but […]