Inspired by ghazal, a style of Persian poetry, Terrestrial Verses collects interviews with people from Iran as they navigate the perplexing bureaucracy that penetrates everyday life. From birth to death, these citizens try desperately, often with humor, to endure.

Directors Ali Asgari and Alireza Khatami have gathered a group of people, of all ages, staring at a fixed camera, to speak their mind, to try to reason with the unreasonable, as they face down Iran’s bizarre and labyrinthian order–from teachers, to religious leaders, to government functionaries. In doing so they have captured, in these 77 minutes, and with humor, anger, and sadness, the whole of a country in the grips of madness.

“A fine distillation of blistering deadpan humor and righteous anger.” –Sheri Linden, Hollywood Reporter