Kisses And Bullets (Short) | BFI Flare 2026
Two Iranian women on opposite sides of the world are moved to protest, no matter the cost.
Here at OBSCURAE, we've always championed short storytelling as the hunting ground for your next favourite filmmaker – and encouraged you not to skip the shorts programme! Welcome back to our Short Film Review Series, Sweet and Short.
By virtue of its subject matter, Kisses and Bullets is perhaps one of the most immediately relevant films in the All These Liberations collection; its story about confronting political power in Iran is inevitably pertinent to consider in the context of Iran’s recent appearance in world news.
The United States’ recent meddling aside, there’s clearly an appetite in Iran for social change, and for the expatriates that carry Iran with them to the West, those feelings don’t subside. The central character, Anahita, is someone for whom her connection to her homeland persists in spite of her new “free” life in America. Yalda, Anahita’s mirror back home, seems like less of a focus, but she’s just as important.
I won’t pretend to know enough about the “Women, Life, Freedom” movement depicted in this film to speak on it with any confidence, but you can tell that to the director, Faranak Sahafian, it meant a lot. It’s hard not to suspect that the film is a meditation on her own involvement in the protests. Both Anahita and Yalda are to be admired for their bravery, even if one of them takes a little while to get there, and the other’s story ends in tragedy.
The image of Anahita draping a rainbow flag over her shoulders is probably the strongest: no matter where you go, the queer community will have your back, even when the place you come from would kill you for wearing such a symbol. But cutting your tethers to home, family, and big moments of change isn’t going to help anyone. You simply have to go to the protest. That’s where the humanity is.
Ultimately, Kisses and Bullets is a scrappy little film – it packs a lot into its short runtime, and does well to depict such a deep and fundamentally international story on a small budget.
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