Abbas Taheri

All the Majesty of a Kingdom is a film about a woman facing a choice she has postponed throughout her life: between staying and leaving, letting go and putting an end.

Iraneh, a filmmaker on the verge of leaving Iran, has to take her father from prison to a remote place of exile. After years apart, she confronts the man she holds responsible for her mother’s death. Accompanied by her teenage son, the journey becomes an attempt to uncover the truth about her mother’s death. Her hatred begins to crack, but her father becomes the center of the family, making decisions about their future—Iraneh’s life, her filmmaking, and her relationship with her son. As her father’s illness worsens, she faces a final choice: save his life or allow the order he represents to end with him.

Family relationships, specifically those between children and parents, have always been at the core of my films. While following this thread, this film goes beyond a family story to explore the myth of the father and the persistence of patriarchal and authoritarian structures within family and society. This also becomes a metaphor for a broader Iranian experience of domination, collective anger, and the difficulty of imagining a different order.

During my fellowship at IAS CEU, I will develop the story into a feature screenplay. I also aim to deepen the film’s world, the narrative structure and visual concepts.