Shirin Neshat's semi-autobiographical Dreamers trilogy comprises three short films inspired by the artist's recurring dreams. Rendered in striking black-and-white, each instalment features a young female protagonist located in a natural landscape, oscillating between dream and reality, sanity and madness. Often unsettling, each film invites the viewer on a strange journey into Neshat's psyche, where the subjectivity of memory, the power of the imagination, and the fluidity of identity converge. The trilogy also gestures to Neshat's experience as an Iranian woman navigating cultural displacement in the United States, while indirectly addressing ideas of gender, power, and protest.

The screening of three short films will be followed by a post-screening talk by Shirin Neshat, via video call, held in English and moderated by M+ Curator of Moving Image, Ulanda Blair.

Illusions & Mirrors

2013 | Digital | No dialogue | 13 min. 22 sec.

Illusion & Mirrors centres on a woman, portrayed by actress Natalie Portman, who negotiates blurring identities, uncanny doubles, and other unnerving encounters in a seaside landscape and manor.

Roja

2016 | Digital | English dialogue, no subtitles | 15 min. 20 sec.

Roja opens with a theatrical performance in which a male actor berates and threatens a young Iranian woman in the audience. She flees the theatre, entering a seemingly inescapable cycle of confrontation and evasion with a mysterious mother figure.

Sarah

2016 | Digital | No dialogue | 12 min. 55 sec.

Sarah follows a young Iranian woman in a forest, as she experiences a series of mysterious visions—from a squadron of chanting soldiers to a troupe of veiled women—that seem to emanate from her own psyche.

Shirin Neshat (b. 1957, Iran) is an acclaimed New York-based photographer and filmmaker renowned for her visually striking, conceptually rich work that explores themes of identity, displacement, gender, and political resistance. Her iconic photographic series Women of Allah (1993–1997) overlaid black-and-white images of veiled Iranian women with Persian calligraphy. Her film Women Without Men (2009), which won the Silver Lion award at the Venice Film Festival, poetically chronicled the lives of four women in 1950s Iran. Neshat's immersive, dreamlike aesthetics, and nuanced engagement with Iran's sociopolitical landscape have cemented her status as a trailblazing voice who powerfully channels personal and collective experiences of exile and transformation through her art.