In the quiet stretches of rural Indiana, a community worn thin by years of hard labor and unspoken histories clings together amid the rustle of cornfields and the echo of distant factories. The landscape feels both intimate and expansive, a place where personal grief can ripple outward, touching neighbors who share the same weathered roads. Beneath the everyday rhythm, layers of cultural memory and private longing linger, setting a tone that is both contemplative and faintly electric, as if the air itself remembers stories yet to be spoken.
Cyrus is a queer poet who has recently stepped away from the grip of alcohol and drugs, seeking a fragile steadiness in the wake of his father’s death. Though his father was an Iranian migrant who labored on the very farms that shape his hometown, Cyrus carries a lingering mystery about his mother, whom he believes perished on the ill‑fated Iran Air Flight 655 when he was an infant. This blend of personal loss and inherited displacement fuels his preoccupation with the idea of martyrdom, prompting him to begin a “book of martyrs” that blurs the line between personal confession and broader myth.
Living with his roommate Zee, whose affection for Cyrus is as tender as it is tangled, the poet finds himself drawn toward a mysterious performance artist whose work is being staged in a famed New York museum. Orkideh, a figure confronting her own mortality through a haunting piece called “Death‑Speak,” becomes the focal point of a journey that pushes Cyrus out of Indiana’s fields and into the pulsing heart of the city’s artistic underworld. Their brief but charged companionship hints at uncharted emotional terrain, while the performance itself reverberates with themes of silence, revelation, and the thin veil between life and legacy.
The film moves like a whispered prayer, pairing lyrical visuals with a soundtrack that blends the rustle of Midwestern winds with the distant hum of metropolitan galleries. It explores how art, memory, and identity intertwine, offering a portrait of characters navigating the fragile space between mourning and the quiet hope of understanding. In this world, every lingering question feels like a breath waiting to be exhalated, inviting the audience to linger in the spaces between what is known and what remains hidden.
