Cage of Dreams
Using virtual production and immersive storytelling, Cage of Dreams reimagines documentary form to tell the true story of Saeed Malekpour, falsely imprisoned by the Iranian regime, and his sister Maryam’s relentless fight to free him—transforming memory, trauma, and resistance into lived cinematic spaces that reveal the limits of human resilience and sacrifice.
This photogrammetric animation has been generously funded by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Toronto Arts Council and Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.
director’s statement
“I came to Canada as a child in 1988, fleeing the Iranian regime with my family as war refugees. That history lives in my body, not just my memory, and it shapes how I tell stories. With Cage of Dreams, I am not interested in traditional documentary distance or passive observation. I am drawn to forms that are felt rather than explained, where emotion, memory, and imagination carry as much truth as facts.
My work increasingly challenges conventional documentary language by using creative technology—virtual production, immersive environments, and cinematic abstraction—to externalize inner states that are otherwise invisible: fear, hope, isolation, resilience. These tools allow me to frame lived experience in a way that is visceral and human, not didactic. I believe technology, when used with care, can deepen empathy rather than distract from it.
As Iran’s Women, Life, Freedom movement continues to resonate globally, this film is my way of holding space for endurance and imagination. It is an offering of hope—an assertion that even under brutal systems of control, the human spirit retains the capacity to dream, resist, and survive.”
- Maziar Ghaderi
Toronto, January 2025
the result
bts stills
