Directed by Mohammadhossein Nikzad. 18min 42sec<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mohammadhossein Nikzad, born in Tehran, Iran in 1997, holds a Pharm.D. from Tehran University of Medical Sciences. His interest in cinema developed alongside his academic studies, eventually leading him to pursue filmmaking through self-guided learning, workshops, and independent study. With a focus on psychological and sociopolitical themes, his work explores the intersection of power, identity, and the human psyche, often through stylized and surreal visual language.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Director Statement<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Third Dream explores the tension between surface narrative and hidden truths, examining how meaning is shaped, controlled, and rewritten by power. Set against the sociopolitical aftermath of the Women, Life, Freedom movement in Iran, the film interrogates reality and repression through the symbolism of dreams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Through layered dualities\u2014imagery and sound, repression and regression, dreamer and prisoner, doctor and interrogator\u2014the film constructs a world where even dreams are not free. They are monitored, distorted, and repurposed through the lens of authority. In this space, concealment is futile; power reaches even into past dreams, uncovering what is meant to remain hidden. The only thing left is the inevitable confession.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Shifts in lighting and set design dissolve the examination room into an interrogation chamber, mirroring the metamorphosis of the dreamer into the prisoner, and the doctor into the interrogator. The camera follows this shift, moving from rigid compositions to handheld urgency, until the film circles back to its opening\u2014altered, distorted, inevitable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Rejecting conventional portrayals of Iran\u2019s charged sociopolitical landscape, The Third Dream resists linear storytelling in favor of a multi-layered structure that dances on the threshold of reality and dream, truth and deception, oppression and resistance. Meaning is displaced into symbols, drawing the audience into the heart of the interrogation\u2014a space they never imagined entering, even in their dreams.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A dreamer resists interrogation by a relentless doctor determined to extract the truth about his dream by coercive use of psychoanalysis. As pressure deepens, memories are altered, erased, and rewritten at will. With no escape from the authority\u2019s reach, he realizes the truth was never his to protect, and confession was inevitable from the beginning.\n<\/p>\n