There are perhaps more than a hundred ways to tell a story, yet only so much time. Mahdi Borjian, however, does not seem to mind what time allows and does not. As if it is second nature for him to spin tales like fibers of cotton, he took only 19 minutes to go from introducing us to Tadji, to having us waiting to see what she would do with the power suddenly placed in her hands. 

In an email interview with NetflixJunkie, Borjian has explained the workings behind the deliciously restrained dramatics of his short film selected for HollyShorts 2026, Tadji. He explained to us what went into creating a film that finds, within the smallest and most ordinary of domestic gestures, an expansive meditation on womanhood, forgiveness, and the power of choosing not to retaliate.

Adiba Nizami: Was Tadji's final decision always at the heart of the story for you, or did you discover what she would ultimately choose as you were writing the film?

Mahdi Borjian: Honestly, I had several endings in my mind from the very beginning, everything from Tadji taking revenge, to her answering Morteza in kind, to forgiveness, and finally the ending you see in the film. I wrote several versions of it. In the end, I tried to go back to the reality of the woman who inspired the story to take her feeling and make it my own, and to listen to my own inner voice. That’s how I arrived at this final ending: one in which Tadji disciplines Morteza, shows the strength of her womanhood, and at the same time keeps the foundation of her family intact.

Adiba: Every short film has to make difficult decisions about what to leave outside the frame. Was Tadji's story always conceived as a roughly 20-minute story, or did the film once contain more of her life, her marriage, or her relationship with Morteza that eventually had to be left out?

Mahdi: Yes, since Tadji is my sixth short film, I’ve reached a point where I have a good sense of what I’m doing. From the very beginning I wanted the film to come in at under 15 minutes, and I kept that in mind throughout the writing process. But Tadji’s subject matter had a lot of branches to it; it grew into a drama full of suspense. So, during the rewrites I had to cut a great deal of that material out, in order to be able to hold the film to 15 minutes in production.

Even so, the first rough cut came to 25 minutes and by the final fine cut, it settled at 19 minutes.

Adiba: What was the first fixed point of the story around which everything else was built? Was it Tadji's decision, Morteza's slap, the opportunity she is given to turn the tables on him, or even the final image of Morteza cautiously sitting down to drink tea with her?

Mahdi: The fixed point around which everything revolves around is Morteza’s theft. Everything stems from that moment, Tadji’s decision about him, her response to him, his reaction, and all the events that unfold from that theft until he sits down beside her at night to drink tea. The film begins in the morning with Morteza’s demand for tea. What unfolds is a transformation: a man who begins the day with brutish, misogynistic behavior becomes, by evening, a man who is tamed, who pours the tea himself, who brings it to her.

And in that shift, the power of forgiveness is revealed, the power of womanhood is revealed, and Tadji’s strength is laid bare.

Adiba: Where did the idea for Tadji originate? Was there a particular incident, piece of literature, personal observation, or something you encountered in the collective experience of women living with domestic violence that first gave the story its shape?

Mahdi: I was doing research for another film, visiting factories, when I suddenly encountered the real Tadji. It was a shock that stopped everything. All my research, all my focus shifted completely. I became consumed by her story. She was a woman who managed a factory production line.

Her husband worked beneath her, under her supervision. He had struggled with addiction before; he’d been to rehabilitation camps many times, but he couldn’t break free from it. So, she brought him to work with her, kept him in front of her eyes, under her watch. That encounter became the threshold. From that real woman, I began to write, blending what I witnessed with my own imagination, until fiction and reality merged, and she became Tadji.

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Adiba: Tadji is presented with a very clear opportunity to punish Morteza, yet she chooses to test him rather than simply seek revenge. She also remains emotionally and practically tethered to a relationship from which she appears capable of walking away. What did you want us to understand about Tadji's reasoning that might not be immediately apparent to someone unfamiliar with the social, familial, and cultural realities surrounding a marriage like hers in Iran?

Mahdi: Yes, my stories are set in Iran, but I choose subjects and tell them in a way that isn’t bound to a specific time, place, or geography. I want anyone from anywhere in the world to be able to watch them. My entire message in this film comes down to this: forgiveness is possible. People can be pardoned.

You can strip someone of their dignity and, through that act, correct their morality and behavior. Small people never forgive; they lack the capacity for it. Great people, people with great souls, they forgive. And this has nothing to do with social status. It comes from within. In my view, women are the greatest and most complete beings ever created.

Forgiveness, compassion, mercy, these are fundamentally women’s work. This is their nature.

Adiba: The film never reduces Tadji to either a victim or an avenger. How did you approach preserving that complexity while writing her—particularly the contradiction between her vulnerability and the agency she ultimately exercises?

Mahdi: Women’s essence is so elevated in my eyes that I could never bring myself to portray a woman as vengeful, even when she has every natural right to be. I don’t want to diminish the delicate spirit of womanhood by showing it that way. Yes, Tadji is a victim. But she is also powerful.

And it was through understanding Tadji’s strength, through reaching the form of her power, that I was able to preserve that complexity, that razor-thin line between breaking and not breaking and to sustain the contradiction embedded in the story itself. This required a deep, existential understanding of women. It’s something I’ve always been studying, always trying to comprehend.

Adiba: There is a striking restraint to the way the film reveals information. How did you and your cinematographer decide what should be shown directly and what should remain in gestures, silences, framing, or objects within the home?

Mahdi: I had never written a screenplay with this level of detail before. Some of it came from the written page. Some came from my imagination. But the vast majority came from something else entirely from a documentary-like relationship I maintained in my mind with the real Tadji.

There were moments on set when the script said one thing, but I would think to myself: The real Tadji wouldn’t do this. Or she would do it like this. In those moments, I trusted my instinct. I listened to it. And with my cinematographer’s help, we captured what that instinct told me was true.

To be honest, I’m a filmmaker who relies heavily on feeling. I trust my instincts implicitly. I surrender to them. I make decisions based on them. And I have rarely regretted it. I make mistakes sparingly.

Adiba: The domestic space at the beginning of the film almost becomes another character—the same rooms can feel intimate, familiar, threatening, and finally uncertain. What did you want the audience to feel about the house by the time we reach the ending, and how did you use cinematography and production design to get there?

Mahdi: That’s exactly why, working with my production designer and cinematographer, we chose a specific visual language: dirty blues, muted grays, and normal lenses. Everything had to feel ordinary, mundane, so that when Morteza’s slap lands, it hits the audience like a genuine shock. The visual palette also had to communicate their economic reality, their social class, their material circumstances. The audience needed that context from the very beginning, they needed to understand the world these two people inhabit before the story unfolds.

We had to do all of this economically, in the shortest possible time. Every frame had to work on multiple levels: establishing their world, their struggle, their dignity despite their circumstances, all without explanation, all through pure visual storytelling.

Adiba: Tadji's character depends heavily on what she does not say. What were you looking for when casting her, and what did the actor bring to Tadji that perhaps wasn't on the page?

Mahdi: One of the most difficult aspects of making this film was finding the right actor. From the beginning, I knew Tadji’s physical presence had to be substantial, matching the magnitude of her spirit. Everyone around her, the workers, everyone, had to regard her with respect. I always carried a specific image of her bearing, her presence.

Before Fatemeh Neyshabouri, one of Iran’s finest actors, came on board, I was working with another actor. But I realized quickly it was a mistake. Fatemeh joined us close to shooting, and through sustained rehearsal, she gradually inhabited the role. She added layers to Tadji bit by bit, until the character became fully realized.

I even introduced her to the real Tadji — though of course, the real woman’s name wasn’t Tadji; that’s what I call her here. Her real name was something else entirely. What Fatemeh brought was grace and patience, but also precision. She layered in both kindness and severity in such a way that you could distinguish between them, feel their weight separately.

She made Tadji whole.

Adiba: After everything Tadji has discovered and everything she has been given the opportunity to do, the film ends not with a dramatic rupture but with the two of them sitting together again. Why was that quiet return to an ordinary domestic gesture the ending you wanted for her?

Mahdi: It comes back to that instinct I mentioned. My feeling was this: if Tadji can resolve the problems of everyone around her, the workers, all the complications of running that factory, then she absolutely has the capacity to resolve her own suffering. She wouldn’t let her family fracture. She wouldn’t allow it.

I’ve always believed in a world without warfare, without conflict. And I know that every conflict, no matter how bitter, ultimately ends in peace. So we compress this, we take philosophy to its smallest, most intimate scale: a single family argument, a moment of violence between two people who share a life. And Tadji quiets it.

Through her forgiveness, through her restraint, she brings everything under control. She calms it. She doesn’t destroy the family - she heals it. She doesn’t retaliate - she restores. That’s her power. That’s what her silence speaks.

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What do you think of Mahdi Borjian's unpacking of womanhood in Tadji? Let us know in the comments.