Director: Susannah Grant
Set against the sun-bleached walls and open courtyards of a Moroccan retreat, this 2024 drama follows two strangers whose brief crossing of paths turns into something far more consuming than either expected.
What is Lonely Planet about?
A woman arrives at a writing retreat in Morocco carrying more personal baggage than she's willing to admit, looking for distance from a life that has quietly stopped working. There she crosses paths with a much younger man attending the same gathering, and their early exchanges, cautious, curious, a little wary of each other, slowly loosen into something neither planned for. Director Susannah Grant lets the Moroccan setting do a lot of the emotional work: markets, desert light, and quiet interior courtyards frame a relationship that develops less through big confrontations and more through small moments of noticing each other. The film is interested in the gap between who its two leads are expected to be and who they actually want to become, using the unfamiliar backdrop of Morocco as a space where old rules about who should be with whom start to feel less fixed. It's a story about permission as much as romance, about what happens when two people far from home stop performing their usual roles.
Cast & crew
Laura Dern and Liam Hemsworth lead the film as the two central characters drawn together at the retreat, with Diana Silvers, Bellina Logan, Sami Fekkak, Gustav Dyekjær Giese, Quintin Mims, and Rachida Brakni filling out the ensemble around them.
Context & significance
An American production shot on location in Morocco, the film uses its North African setting as more than scenery, letting the unfamiliar surroundings mirror its central characters' sense of being somewhere outside their usual lives. At 94 minutes, it keeps its focus tightly on the two leads rather than a wider ensemble story.
Where & how to watch
Lonely Planet is available on K-Time with Persian dubbing and Persian subtitles, ready to watch after logging into a free account, with an interface built around the Farsi-language experience for viewers in the diaspora.