Doc Fortnight ’26: The Vanishing Point

It didn't start in 2026. It didn’t start with the women life freedom movement. It didn’t even start with the Green protests of 2009. It certainly wasn’t anything Trump created. For decades, Iranians have resisted their oppressive Islamist regime. A painful case in point would be filmmaker Bani Khoshnoudi’s dissident cousin, who was arrested and eventually executed, leaving behind only a small bag of effects. For years, her family grieved her in silence. However, like so many bereaved parents, Khoshnoudi finally speaks out, paying tribute to her cousin and condemning the regime’s human rights abuses in The Vanishing Point, which screens again today as part of the 2026 Documentary Fortnight at MoMA.

In 1988, Khoshnoudi and her husband tried to covertly return to Iran, but she was betrayed by her in-laws. The rest of her life was spent in Evin prison, with no contact with the outside world. When her family retrieved her possessions, they were warned to stay quiet, which they did.

Khoshnoudi, who immigrated to the U.S. with her parents after the 1979 revolution, was banned from returning to Iran in 2009, after directing a film addressing the Green protests. She was probably safer that way, judging from her mother’s anecdote, explaining how she once outsmarted Basij morality police, a story that is both absurdly funny and chillingly frightening.

This film does not focus on Khoshnoudi’s cousin, but she is the inspiration and the catalyst. The grief her family had to hide also helps her relate to the anguished mothers seen in the protest footage she incorporates throughout the film.

Frankly, The Vanishing Point is a little of this and a little of that. There is visceral video of the Iranian police and Basij militia beating and even shooting protesters at point blank range. There are also family interviews and even meditative interludes filmed in the abandoned homes left behind by dissenting Iranians made to disappear.

The assembly is almost collage-like, but there is a clear and significant point to just about everything Khoshnoudi shows the audience. It is thoughtful and mournful, but it also strips away any pretense of the current Iranian government’s legitimacy. Repeatedly, we hear average, educated Iranians literally praying for a new and improved revolution.

This is a film hipster cineastes need to see, because it provides an extremely timely moral-ethical reality check. It should thoroughly shame anyone who inconceivably protested “in solidarity” with the murderous, oppressive regime. Very highly recommended, The Vanishing Point screens again today (3/7) as part of this year’s Doc Fortnight.