Sundance Winner Shot in Secret in Tehran Gets December Release

Greenwich Entertainment will release The Friend's House Is Here in U.S. theaters beginning December 4. The film, written, directed and produced by Hossein Keshavarz and Maryam Ataei, won the US Dramatic Special Jury Award for Ensemble Cast at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival. Its first trailer has now arrived.

The drama goes inside Tehran's underground art scene — work made and performed outside state sanction. Pari, a theater director, and Hanna, a dancer, are roommates, best friends and professional partners. The film follows their rehearsals, performances and daily routines until, per the official synopsis, "their secret circle is discovered."

The directors shot the entire film covertly. The synopsis describes their method: they "blur the boundaries between theatrical performance and lived experience, crafting a luminous portrait of sisterhood where art becomes inseparable from life and even the smallest creative choices can become acts of resistance."

What does the risk actually look like?

Keshavarz and Ataei have been direct about the conditions of production. "The story of the film is also the story of making the film," they said in a statement. "It is about the power of art to speak truth in a society where misinformation is the official narrative."

They frame the danger plainly. "We shot the film underground, under the threat of arrest if caught. Indeed, the threat of imprisonment is the reality every artist in Iran faces."

Yet they refuse to let that danger define the work. "But this reality does not define us. It is a part of our lives. But we focus on the sweet today."

A different portrait of Iran

The synopsis makes one more claim worth noting: the film is "far removed from familiar portrayals of Iran." Instead of state politics or crisis, the story centers on the texture of artists' everyday lives — rehearsals, shared meals, small creative decisions.

That focus is the mechanism of the film. When every rehearsal carries legal risk, the directors suggest, ordinary artistic choices — staging a scene, dancing in a living room — become resistance in themselves.

For U.S. audiences, the December 4 release offers a rare first-hand look at a scene most viewers will never otherwise see: work made inside Iran, by directors who stayed to make it, arriving with Sundance's endorsement and a distributor willing to platform it.