What if love challenged everything you believed?

In modern-day Iran, Layla and Sasan fall in love across a divide of faith and tradition. As persecution threatens to tear them apart, they dare to believe that even deeply entrenched beliefs can change, and that a future together is possible..

Synopsis

Cast Aside the Clouds

A woman in a blue dress and a man in a beige shirt and brown pants standing outside near an elevator at night. They are smiling and engaged in conversation, with greenery and a street visible in the background.

An attack on her father’s bookstore brings Layla Khosravi into the life of Dr. Sasan Naderi, a neurologist with a promising future. Their unexpected connection deepens into love, bringing together two people whose lives in Tehran offer very different possibilities.

Barred from university because she is Bahá’í, Layla continues her education through an underground university, sustained by faith and a determination to shape her own future. Sasan, preparing for a fellowship in Hamburg, begins to question long-held beliefs and imagine a life with her.

When Layla is arrested, Sasan must choose between protecting the future he has planned and standing beside the woman he loves. Her courage deepens his understanding of her faith and the injustice she faces, compelling him to confront his beliefs and what he is willing to risk.

Cast Aside the Clouds is an intimate love story about the courage to question inherited prejudice and follow one’s conscience, opening the way to a future neither could have imagined alone.

Director’s Statement

Mary Darling

A smiling woman with short gray hair and glasses, wearing earrings, standing outdoors among other people and cars, holding a notebook. Mary Darling

This film began with a desire to explore how falling in love can challenge the beliefs that shape our lives. At its centre are Layla and Sasan, two people whose unexpected connection opens the possibility of a shared future in a world that keeps them apart. Their love unfolds amid religious persecution, as Layla pursues her hopes with a determination that exclusion will not define her life.

For me, this film is personal. It reflects questions I carry and stories I feel compelled to tell. Through handheld cameras, natural light and layered sound, we sought to capture the tenderness of their growing connection, the warmth of Layla’s home and the tension of living under scrutiny.

I believe the arts help us understand who we are and imagine who we might become. At its heart, Cast Aside the Clouds asks what happens when love brings us face to face with beliefs we have never questioned. Seeking truth for ourselves takes reason, reflection and consultation, as well as the courage to reconsider familiar assumptions.

This is Sasan’s journey. As he falls in love with Layla, he begins to see beyond the prejudices he has absorbed. The future they imagine together asks him to turn understanding into conscience and action.

Together with co-directors Bre Vader and Felicia Sobhani, we sought to tell an intimate love story that honours the resilience of those who face persecution and their belief that change remains possible.

—Mary Darling

Literary Inspiration

A woman with glasses and curly hair sitting with her arms crossed, leaning against a dark blue wall in a dimly lit room.

Although Cast Aside the Clouds is an original story, it draws deep inspiration from the quiet defiance and spiritual clarity of Khatute Utab (Utab’s Memories), a novel by Persian author Rouhieh Fanaian, written in the wake of Iran’s 1979 Revolution. For a Bahá’í woman to write such a work-at a time when her faith, gender, and voice were under direct threat-was an act of uncommon courage.

Fanaian’s novel was never officially published in Iran. Instead, it survived underground-passed hand to hand, read in secret, and safeguarded by a community long denied the right to tell its own stories. In writing Utab’s Memories, Fanaian performed a radical act of cultural preservation: she spoke truth in a time of forced silence.

Today, decades later, the novel still circulates online in both Persian and English—a testament to its enduring power across generations and borders. Though our film is not a retelling, its emotional core is rooted in the same soil: the resilience of women, the dignity of faith under fire, and the belief that even the most silenced stories will find their light.

Fanaian’s work reminds us: stories endure not because they are permitted… but because they are necessary.

To choose love and faith over fear

When everything around you threatens your existence

Production Background

Cast Aside the Clouds was created with a sense of immediacy.

This production was a quiet act of resistance and reverence, bringing together an international team committed to telling this untold narrative with care.

A woman sits in a chair holding clothing, looking up in a room with a wooden cabinet and a group of people around her, including an older man and woman appearing upset, and two men in the background, one pointing.

Handheld Camera Work & Naturalistic Performances

While traditional camera movements on dollies, tripods, cranes, and Steadicam shaped the broader storytelling with precision and control, handheld work allowed us to step directly into the scene with the actors—capturing their emotions up close, and connecting viewers to their inner lives with raw authenticity. This approach created a heightened sense of immediacy and emotional intimacy, while also encouraging grounded, naturalistic performances from our cast.

City skyline with tall buildings and TV antennas, with snow-capped mountains in the background.

Real Footage from Tehran

Due to the political sensitivity of the film’s subject, we collaborated with a brave and anonymous filmmaker in Iran to capture real, on-the-ground footage from Tehran.

This footage, woven throughout the film, offers glimpses of the city’s overlooked beauty: its architecture, rituals, and rhythm of life. These scenes lend a tactile reality to the story and reflect the heart of a culture often misunderstood or misrepresented.

Two children sitting on the sandy beach at the water's edge, with the ocean and a partly cloudy sky in the background.

A Hybrid Score

The music bridges tradition and modernity, fusing Persian classical instruments with minimalist and jazz-inspired arrangements.

This hybrid score reflects the emotional dualities of the film-repression and freedom, fear and faith, fragility and strength-creating a resonant backdrop that deepens the film’s emotional pulse.

This all comes together in an original song titled “Cast Aside the Clouds” that was composed to play over the end credits.

Cityscape of Tehran with skyscrapers, a large Iranian flag, and a communication tower in the background, with busy highway traffic in the foreground.

Layered Sound Design

The sonic world of the film was crafted with care, blending the ambient hum of Tehran with subtle spiritual motifs, including whispered prayers and sacred chants.

Ambient sound, captured on the streets of Tehran during production, these recordings bring an immediacy and authenticity to the soundscape..

Cast Aside the Clouds honors those who live with resilience and courage in the face of erasure, and invites us to reflect on and question our own inherited beliefs.

Do you want to see Cast Aside the Clouds in your local theatre?

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This stanza felt deeply aligned with our film’s exploration of truth. As Táhirih calls us to “cast aside the clouds” and remove the veils that obscure the sun, our characters are challenged to let go of their own prejudices and assumptions.

The imagery of unveiling speaks to the heart of their journey: truth is not hidden, but obscured by what they carry. By setting aside these barriers, they discover they can explore the truth with greater clarity.

Tahirih’s Poetry

“Cast aside the clouds to show them

the sun in its full splendor

by removing the veils

from the beauty of your face.”

Táhirih Qurratu'l-'Ayn