25th Houston Iranian Film Festival: Window Horses: The Poetic Persian Epiphany of Rosie Ming

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the Houston Iranian Film Festival, established by the MFAH and Rice Cinema. Screenings take place at both venues, as well as at Asia Society Texas Center.

Window Horses: The Poetic Persian Epiphany of Rosie Ming

Director – Ann Marie Fleming
Released – 2017
Country – Canada
Running Time – 85 minutes

Rosie Ming, a young Canadian poet voiced by Sandra Oh, is invited to perform at a poetry festival in Shiraz, Iran, but she’d rather be in Paris. She lives at home with her over-protective Chinese grandparents and has never been anywhere by herself. Once in Iran, she finds herself in the company of poets and Persians, all who tell her stories that force her to confront her past and the Iranian father she assumed abandoned her—and the nature of poetry itself.

The film is about building bridges between cultural and generational divides. It’s about being curious, staying open, and finding your own voice through the magic of poetry.

Rosie goes on an unwitting journey of forgiveness, reconciliation, and perhaps above all, understanding, through learning about her father’s past, her own cultural identity, and her responsibility to it.

The film won Best Animated Feature Film at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards.

Guests coming for the screening will also receive FREE admission to Asia Society’s Wondrous Worlds: Art & Islam Through Time & Place exhibition during their visit.

“Uncommonly concerned with depicting people from different backgrounds engaged in the radical act of listening to one another, the film revels in the simple yet profound pleasures of conversation and cultural exchange.” – Film Journal International

“The film provides a counterweight to our xenophobic times, proving that human beings are more alike than unalike and that poetry can be relevant across millennia” – Variety

• Read an interview with director Ann Marie Fleming.