Shayda opens inside an Australian women's shelter, where a young Iranian mother and her six-year-old daughter are starting over just as Nowruz begins.
What is Shayda about?
The film follows the two weeks of the Iranian New Year from inside a shelter rather than a family home, tracking how a mother rebuilds a sense of safety for her daughter while old ties keep pressing in from outside. Ordinary rituals of the holiday, a spread table, phone calls, neighbors checking in, sit alongside the daily routines of shelter life, and the contrast gives the story its shape. Rather than framing the mother's situation as a single crisis, the film stays close to the small, repeated choices that make up leaving and rebuilding: what to say to a child, what to keep from her, and how to hold a holiday's meaning together with a new and uncertain present. The shelter itself becomes a kind of temporary household, staffed and shared with other women in similar circumstances, and the daughter's presence keeps the story anchored in the everyday rather than in abstraction.
About the cast
Zar Amir Ebrahimi leads the cast, joined by Osamah Sami, Leah Purcell, Jillian Nguyen, Mojean Aria, Selina Zahednia, Rina Mousavi, and Lucinda Armstrong Hall.
Context & significance
Noora Niasari directs Shayda, a 2023 drama produced between Australia and the United Kingdom. Setting the story during Nowruz roots it in a holiday that Iranian and diaspora audiences will recognize immediately, even as the shelter setting keeps the focus tightly domestic and present-tense rather than sweeping or historical. The film sits within a broader wave of diaspora-made drama that looks at Iranian family life from the outside a home country, told in English but built around Persian custom and rhythm.
Watching Shayda on Ktime
Shayda streams on K-Time with a free account login, no separate purchase required to watch. The platform is built around Persian-language viewers, and this title carries both Persian dubbing and Persian subtitles, so it can be watched in the original English with Farsi text on screen or in a fully dubbed Farsi track, whichever a household prefers.