Night of Passage (2025)

Three friends from Tehran are dropped off in the Slovakian forest. They are to wait for the truck that witth smuggle them into Austria. However there are unexpected complications.

I was not expecting to review this film. I had asked for FOUND&LOST a film by Reza Rasouli that is playing Tribeca, but the link was NIGHT OF PASSAGE. Not one to waste the chance to see a film that fate put before me I gave it a shot.

My one thought watching the film was when was Rasouli going to get a feature? This 20 minute gut punch heralds the arrival of a new force in world cinema. Having an urgency and lived in quality that is rare in films today, especially when the film is so good that you stop worrying about the message and the politics and purely focus on the characters.  Too often the characters get lost for whatever the director is trying to say, but here Rasouli is crying out for humanity and he never lets us forget that the pain of the world is because there are real people being hurt.

This is a masterpiece and must be seen.