Director: Sasha Rainbow
Ambition curdles into something monstrous in this body-horror thriller about how far one outsider will go to finally belong.
What is Grafted about?
Wai-Ling arrives at a New Zealand university as an exchange student, brilliant in her chosen field of research but visibly out of step with everyone around her. She has come chasing a place at the center of things, drawn by the promise of acceptance from classmates who barely register her presence and a research project that consumes most of her waking hours. Her academic work centers on grafting, on the unsettling idea that identity and appearance might be transferable between bodies given the right technique. When her ambitions and her isolation collide, that research stops being theoretical, and Wai-Ling begins applying what she has learned to herself and to the people around her who never gave her a second look. The film follows her transformation step by step, tracking how a hunger for social acceptance mutates into something far darker once she realizes she finally has the tools to reshape how the world sees her.
Cast & crew
Joyena Sun carries the film as Wai-Ling, playing the character's shift from awkward outsider to something far more unsettling with a controlled, escalating intensity. Jess Hong appears as one of the classmates whose easy popularity becomes both a target and a template for Wai-Ling's transformation.
Context & significance
A 2024 New Zealand and UK co-production, the film uses body horror as a lens on the anxiety of not fitting in, framing skin and appearance as something that can be surgically reworked once identity itself starts to feel unbearable.
Where & how to watch
Grafted is available to stream on K-Time with Persian dubbing and Persian subtitles, so Farsi-speaking viewers can follow every unsettling turn in Wai-Ling's story. A free K-Time account is all it takes to start watching, and the platform's interface is built around a Farsi-first experience for Iranian audiences abroad.