Abstract:

This study aims to explore how the socio‑cultural conditions of the 2010s — the 1390s in the Iranian calendar — shaped the thematic, narrative, and symbolic structures of contemporary Iranian short screenplays. The research is founded on the assumption that the short screenplay, as an autonomous yet understudied narrative form, reflects the hidden layers of cultural experience and the creative consciousness of a new generation of Iranian filmmakers. Rather than merely recording reality, these short scripts function as interpretive constructs through which social anxieties, generational disillusionment, and transformations in everyday life are encoded into symbolic cinematic language.

The significance of the study stems from the short screenplay’s position as both a cultural product and a vehicle of critical expression. During the 2010s, Iranian society witnessed a period of intensified economic strain, digital expansion, and ideological fragmentation following the political unrest of the previous decade. These rapid changes fostered new sensibilities among young artists who grappled with constraints of censorship, unemployment, and shifting values. In this context, the short screenplay evolved into a hybrid arena where aesthetic experimentation collided with socio‑political awareness. Its concise form, reliance on visual signifiers, and openness to metaphor made it an ideal site to capture the tensions between hope and despair, conformity and dissent, silence and expression.

While much scholarship on Iranian cinema has concentrated on feature films or auteur figures, the short screenplay offers distinct insights into the micro‑politics of culture. Its production is typically independent, low‑budget, and festival‑oriented; yet precisely such marginality enables writers to articulate new voices outside institutional structures. These works reveal how a generation trained in digital literacy and social media platforms re‑imagines storytelling through condensed and elliptical narratives. They translate collective unease into brief but resonant vignettes that mirror the fragmentation of social space and the dispersal of meaning in urban life. The short screenplay, therefore, becomes a unique archive of contemporary cultural imagination.

Methodologically, the research follows a qualitative content‑analysis approach within an interpretive–constructivist paradigm. A purposive sample of five notable short fiction screenplays from the 2010s — Hayvan (The Animal), Sorahi (The Ewer), Gambler, Retouch, and Korsoo — was selected. These works were chosen based on their festival recognition, critical reception, and thematic diversity, representing varied artistic reactions to similar socio‑cultural contexts. Data gathering relied on documentary and library‑based sources, complemented by textual analysis. The collected data were coded and classified into analytical tables focusing on narrative structure, characterization, symbolism, and ideological subtext. The theoretical framework integrates three complementary perspectives:

(1) Saussure’s structuralism, emphasizing the relational nature of signifiers and the system of meaning;

(2) Bourdieu’s post‑structural sociology, particularly his notions of field and cultural capital; and

(3) Marcuse’s theory of critical individualism, which positions imagination as a force of resistance against one‑dimensional rationality.

This interdisciplinary model enables the study to read short screenplays not as isolated artistic artefacts but as nodes within a network of cultural production and negotiation.

The findings highlight recurring thematic patterns: family disintegration, migration, moral decay, routine monotony, and identity crisis. However, it is not only the content but also the form that embodies these conditions. Narrative brevity, fragmented chronology, detached tone, and open endings represent a symbolic mode through which uncertainty and constraint are dramatized. Characters are often trapped between external authority and internal paralysis, revealing a consciousness shaped by conflicting values. Everyday objects — a pair of glasses, an animal mask, an empty room, or a wilting plant — function as visual motifs through which authors communicate silence, loss, and aspiration. The “economy of metaphor” that governs such scripts allows meaning to circulate through gestures, colors, and pauses rather than dialogue, producing an aesthetics of suggestion and ambiguity.

The research also demonstrates that these screenwriters employ indirect discourse and elliptical storytelling as strategies of survival under institutional surveillance. Their use of minimal dialogue, spatial limitation, and symbolic framing transforms restriction into creativity. The visual landscapes — urban apartments, small shops, rooftops, border zones — echo the characters’ psychological confinement and the fragmented geography of modern Iran. In line with Bourdieu’s field theory, the short screenplay exists in a semi‑autonomous space between state‑regulated production and global festival circulation, reflecting both dependency and subversion. The act of writing itself becomes a negotiation of power where young authors struggle to maintain authenticity while achieving visibility.

From the lens of critical individualism, the study interprets these works as expressions of both alienation and agency. Although despair, fatigue, and resignation permeate their atmosphere, moments of ethical choice or aesthetic clarity mark possibilities of emancipation. For instance, the portrayal of a quiet moral gesture—the return of an object, an unspoken refusal, a hesitant act of compassion—operates as a counter‑narrative to social cynicism. Here imagination acquires a redemptive function: it challenges the status quo not through overt confrontation but through subtle re‑humanization of experience. The symbolic register of these screenplays thus serves as an implicit social critique, proposing sensibility and empathy as forms of cultural resistance.

Furthermore, the analysis reveals the intricate relation between form, ideology, and audience. The open‑ended structures invite viewers to participate in meaning‑making, transforming spectators into co‑interpreters rather than passive consumers. This dialogic quality, reinforced by the frequent use of silence and visual understatement, aligns with post‑structural principles that emphasize plurality and interpretive freedom. The ambiguity sustained throughout these narratives does not signal confusion but an intentional strategy to reflect the instability of truth in a society where official discourse often suppresses complexity.

In discussing the socio‑historical impact, the research observes how the aftermath of economic sanctions, the rise of informal labor markets, and the digital reconfiguration of public space all find symbolic resonance in character portrayals. The weary workers, disoriented youth, religious novices, and aging loners populate these scripts as embodiments of a collective psychosocial fatigue. Yet, rather than surrendering to despair, the short form’s imaginative condensation turns limitation into lucidity—the capacity to distill large realities into small, precise moments of significance. This artistic minimalism resonates with Marcuse’s belief that true freedom emerges in moments when art detaches from functionality and reclaims its utopian tension.

The study concludes that the Iranian short screenplay of the 2010s occupies a crucial intersection between cultural determinism and creative autonomy. It encapsulates the dialectic of adaptation and resistance: how young writers internalize social crisis yet transform it into reflective art. By mobilizing symbolic language and structural experimentation, their works reveal both the wounds and the wisdom of a generation navigating uncertainty. The short screenplay, though brief in duration, operates as a microcosm of collective memory—a mirror that refracts despair into imagination and critique.

Ultimately, the research underscores that the short screenplay’s artistic and cultural potential exceeds its scale. Through its economy of form and depth of emotion, it articulates the shifting moral landscapes of Iranian society and offers renewed possibilities for social reflection. Structuralism elucidates the pattern of signs; post‑structuralism exposes the play of power within meaning; and critical individualism retrieves the emancipatory energy of imagination. Together they illustrate how cultural conditions inform the syntax of storytelling and how storytelling, in turn, re‑imagines culture itself. In sum, the decade of the 2010s should not be read merely as a period of socio‑economic fatigue but as a moment of creative re‑awakening within the margins of art.



Keywords: Short Screenplay; Iranian Cinema; 2010s Decade (1390s); Society and Culture; Structuralism; Post‑Structuralism; Critical Individualism