Sima's Unfinished Story
A sociology professor's life implodes when a single photograph goes viral. That's the entire setup β no murder, no affair, no criminal act. Just an image circulating through social media, and suddenly everything Dr. Arash Samin thought was stable shifts beneath him.
Writer-director Alireza Samadi's 2026 film Sima's Unfinished Story is quieter than you'd expect for a premise like that. It's not a thriller. It's more interested in the slow burn of watching your own reputation become something you can't control β the psychological texture of a man realizing that the internet has written a version of his life he didn't authorize. The Persian title, Rowayat-e NΔtamΔm-e SimΔ, translates as "Sima's Unfinished Narration," and that word choice matters. The film's really about who gets to tell the story, and what happens when you lose narrative control.
The Setup: What Actually Happens
Dr. Samin has a solid life. He's a respected sociology professor β someone who studies how societies work, how norms get enforced, how communities police their members. He's married to a doctor. He has a young daughter. The domestic scenes don't feel staged; there's a real grammar to how this marriage moves through space and silence. Then the photograph surfaces, and neither of them quite knows how to correct the syntax error it introduces.
The film doesn't make him a victim, which is the right call. It doesn't let him off easy either. What's striking is that Samadi uses the sociology-professor framing as an irony engine β here's a man who understands social pressure applied to a situation where he becomes its subject. The cast includes Mehran Ahmadi, Ali Ashmand, Mahsa Bavafa, and Sadaf Fathi, among others, and they're deployed across a social world that suggests this isn't a claustrophobic family drama but something wider. About 90 minutes of film, but it doesn't feel rushed. The pacing is deliberate β some viewers will call it slow, but that slowness is doing work. It replicates the dread that builds when something's wrong and you can't locate the source.
How It Got Made β and Where It's Playing Now
Samadi wrote and directed the film himself, which gives it a kind of personal investment that shows on screen. His sister Azadeh Samadi appears in the cast, which tells you something about the scale of the production. The film had its Iranian theatrical release on July 3, 2024, and has since traveled the festival circuit β it appeared at the River Film Festival in Padova, Italy, in 2026, which is a reasonable marker that it found traction beyond its home market.
You can watch Sima's Unfinished Story on MUBI, which carries it under the alternate English title Sima's Unfinished Narrative (that's the translation variance you get with Persian-language titles moving into distribution). For current streaming availability in your region β because rights shift β check Movie OTT's where-to-watch tracker, which aggregates these changes in real time across platforms. That's genuinely useful if you're dealing with a festival film that rolled out in stages rather than all at once globally.
On IMDb, the film currently sits at 5.0 out of 10 from 77 votes. Small sample, but not nothing. Hard to say if that number moves significantly as it finds wider audiences.
Why the Restraint Works
Iranian cinema has a long tradition of finding the political inside the domestic, and this film fits that lineage without feeling derivative. What I keep coming back to is how Samadi trusts the audience. He withholds information you want. The craft β particularly in the quieter scenes β is confident enough that you sit with that discomfort rather than resenting it.
The social-media disruption plot could easily tip into melodrama or, worse, into a lecture about morality and accountability. Samadi largely avoids both. There's no moment where the film stops to explain itself. You're watching two people navigate a crisis they don't fully understand, and the film doesn't pretend to understand it better than they do (which is, honestly, how most people actually experience things like this).
The performances matter here too. Ahmadi brings a particular kind of watchful energy that keeps you slightly off-balance about whose side the film is actually on. It's not interested in clear villains. Everyone's reasonable, and that's what makes it sting.
Who Should Actually Watch This
If you're drawn to world cinema that doesn't resolve neatly β films that trust you to sit with discomfort β this one lands. Think along the lines of other contemporary Iranian domestic dramas that use the family unit as a lens on larger social pressures. Not a film for people who want plot momentum above all else. But if you're interested in how social media reshapes identity, marriage, and professional standing all at once, you'll find something here.
Not family-friendly, though the film doesn't rely on gore or explicit content β it's more about the slow suffocation of privacy and agency, which kids probably shouldn't watch anyway.
Runtime: Approximately 90β95 minutes
Language: Persian (Farsi) with subtitles on streaming platforms
Where to check availability: Movie OTT updates regional access regularly
Next Step
Search for it on MUBI first β that's the most direct route if you're already subscribed. If not, use Movie OTT to see what's available in your country right now. The film rewards your attention, but only if you're willing to give it space to breathe.
