Jiawen Zhang

Last month, I found myself tucked into a seat of the Whitney Humanities Center on the brink of tears. I was watching “One Must Wash Eyes,” a deeply moving film by Sepideh Yadegar. Through a partnership between the Yale Office of International Students — OISS — and New Haven nonprofits CRIW — Collective for Immigrant Women’s Wellbeing — Havenly and Sanctuary Kitchen, I had the honor of celebrating International Women’s Day and stepping into a story that felt achingly close to home.

Yadegar, an Iranian-born, Vancouver-based director, explores the grief of being a woman caught between borders. “One Must Wash Eyes” follows the life of an Iranian international student in Canada during the “Women Life Freedom” uprisings in Iran — a protest movement that erupted in September 2022 after Mahsa Amini, a young Iranian woman, was executed by the government for leaving her house without her hair fully covered. Sahar, the film’s protagonist, a pre-med student in Vancouver, participates in a protest and loses her job as a result.

I watched the deep worry on Sahar’s face as her FaceTime with her mom cut in and out due to internet blockages in Iran. I saw the bank account balance looming over Sahar as she agonized over how to pay her tuition. In the final scene, after losing her student visa, I saw Sahar sitting alone on a hill, gazing out into the horizon. Her expression conveyed a profound sense of loss, but also an underlying quiet bravery and an unwavering, burning hope that refused to be extinguished.

After the screening, Yadegar sat down with Eman Salih, a Sudanese Postdoctoral Associate at the Yale School of Public Health and a member of the Yale Scholars At Risk program, and Kimia Sinaeian GRD ’28, an Iranian doctoral candidate in chemical engineering, for a panel discussion. The three women traced a shared lineage of loss and resistance across geographies.

The event was followed by a community reception featuring food prepared by local refugee and immigrant women chefs, organized by Havenly and Sanctuary Kitchen. I watched as plates of yalanji and mini baklava lined the tables. Children weaved through the chairs, giggling and clutching juice boxes, while elders sat at tables, speaking softly in Dari and Arabic.

After breaking my fast, I spoke with Yadegar, Sali and Sinaeian. Yadegar was born in a small town in Iran and was an international student in Canada during Mahsa Amini’s death, just like Sahar in the film. She recalled the overwhelming stress of constantly watching the news, feeling helpless while her country was “on fire” and she was far away. “My experience was helplessness,” she shared. “Because I couldn’t be there with my people to fight for what they were fighting for.”

Yadegar explained that the title “One Must Wash Eyes” is a reference to a poem by Sohrab Sepehri, which she first read in middle school in Iran.

One must wash eyes, look differently to things words must be washed

The word must be wind itself, the word must be the rain itself

One must shut umbrellas

One must walk in the rain

One must carry the thought, the recollection in the rain

One must go walk in the rain with all the townsfolk

One must see friends in the rain

One must search love in the rain

— Sohrab Sepehri

Yadegar interprets the line “One must wash eyes” as a call to look at the world from a different perspective. “At its core,” she explained, “I wanted the film to ask people to have empathy toward others.”

What makes the film particularly striking is the way the director handles grief. In one scene, Sahar receives a call from her uncle in Iran, telling her that her mother has been shot and killed. She is sitting in a cafe, where another family is gathered around a cake, celebrating a birthday. In the background, the sounds of laughter and party horns echo. The camera pans between Sahar’s breaking heart and the joyous celebration a few feet behind her. Sahar frantically calls her mother’s phone again and again, only to hear the voicemail: “I’m not available at the moment.”

This is what grief in exile looks like. It made me think about how often we walk past our peers on campus without knowing about the stories they carry. It is too easy for us to disregard the weight on other’s shoulders.

I myself am the eldest daughter of immigrants from Afghanistan. At Yale, I carry the weight of my family’s story in everything I do. I carry the story of my mother, who sacrificed her education in the 1980s when the Taliban regime bombed her elementary school. I carry the story of my four relatives, who fled Afghanistan by rowboat in 2015 to escape persecution, yet drowned in the Aegean Sea.

Even now, I read the news to see that a total of 2.2 million girls have been forbidden from entering classrooms in Afghanistan. Simultaneously, I have the privilege of enjoying intellectually stimulating discussions, waking up to hot breakfast in the dining hall and spending hours in the library at Yale. The juxtaposition of our lives feels impossible to reconcile, where I navigate the days with the privilege of stability.

I also spoke with Hossna Samadi, co-founder of CRIW and a refugee from Afghanistan, who shared a similar sentiment. We talked in Dari, our native language. The film’s closing song on homeland reminded her of the struggles of women and girls in Afghanistan. She emphasized the importance of remembrance and solidarity despite shifts in media coverage. “Just because something isn’t in the news doesn’t mean it’s not happening. Events like this remind us to keep remembering.”

The film makes its debut on campus at a time where students feel increasingly worried about their rights — a time where one’s status in the country can seem increasingly precarious, and where works like Yadegar’s may be cast to the side.

Stories of protest, displacement, and resilience are too often pushed to the sidelines. But they shouldn’t be. We all carry stories like Sahar’s — stories of sacrifice, of holding onto hope through unbearable distance. And with film, we have a powerful medium to bring those stories to light.

“One Must Wash Eyes” depicted the grief that hits in a phone call. The deafening silence that follows. The birthday party that unfolds a few feet behind her. Film captures these contradictions in a way that lingers. 

We must do more to screen these films and create intentional spaces for reflection. Events like this screening are acts of solidarity. They remind us of what it means to show up for one another and to hold space for grief, joy and resistance.