Zip (14:33)
Ava Maria Safai; Crazy8s; IMDb; YouTube

This is one of those films I don't quite know how to rate, because I think it's very good, but at the same time hard to watch. It's also hard to call it "horror", per se. It is that, but aside from the titular conceit (which I'll explain later), it's all too realistic. It's sort of a "message movie" about misogyny, specifically in Iranian families. (It was apparently made in Canada, but I'm not sure whether it's set there or in Iran. I tend to suspect it's in Canada, just because the main character has a couple of friends who are white and black, and most of her classmates and teacher are white. The languge of the film is Persian, I think, but it has English subtitles.) I guess it's set in the 1970s, but it addresses issues which may be prevalent in many different times and places.

The main character is a girl named Melody, who sings and writes songs. She wants to perform in her school's upcoming talent show with her friends. Unfortunately, her father has scheduled a get-together on the night of the show. It doubles as a sort of celebration of Melody's sixteenth birthday, and a "proposal" of marriage, which her father had arranged without her consent, in which Melody first meets her betrothed and his family. Her intended husband is an adult, which is disturbing in its own right. But while the realistic horror of a family and community that treats women (and girls) more like property than people is bad enough, there's more to the story. Melody wakes up on her sixteenth birthday to find a zipper has been sewn onto her mouth, and she can't unzip it. It's a horrifying metaphor for women being silenced by society.

I guess that's all I want to reveal of the plot (and I feel like I've already spoiled too much by revealing the meaning of the film's title). But it's a very powerful short film, and well-made. I don't really know what else to say, it's just very disturbing and eye-opening to some of the horrors experienced by women and girls (with or without the metaphorical zipper).