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Logline

Seventeen-year-old Iranian-American Maryam feels invisible, trapped working in her mother’s Persian café while obsessing over a polished influencer who seems to embody everything she is not. After a humiliating encounter, Maryam embarks on a surreal beauty transformation using the ingredients of her culture, only to discover that reinventing herself comes at a cost. A darkly comic body-horror fable about assimilation, identity, and belonging.

Synopsis

CucumbHER is a dark comedy body-horror short film about Maryam, a seventeen-year-old Iranian-American girl who longs to escape the Persian café where she works with her mother and reinvent herself as the kind of effortlessly beautiful, confident young woman she sees celebrated online. When a humiliating encounter with a local influencer deepens her insecurities, Maryam embarks on a bizarre beauty transformation using the foods, beauty rituals, and cultural lessons she has spent her life trying to distance herself from.

As her transformation begins to attract the attention and validation she craves, Maryam becomes increasingly consumed by the promise of reinvention. What begins as a desperate attempt to fit in soon escalates into a surreal and unsettling unraveling, forcing her to confront how much of herself she is willing to shed in pursuit of belonging.

Blending satire, magical realism, and body horror, CucumbHER explores assimilation, beauty standards, cultural inheritance, and the complicated relationship between mothers and daughters. Through a distinctly Iranian-American lens, the film examines the emotional cost of self-rejection and the universal desire to be seen, accepted, and loved.

Rooted in the Iranian-American experience, CucumbHER reimagines assimilation as a body-horror transformation. Combining humor, discomfort, and cultural specificity, the film explores the collision of beauty standards, social media culture, and immigrant identity through the eyes of a teenage girl desperate to reinvent herself. At its heart, it is a story about belonging and the realization that self-acceptance cannot be achieved through self-erasure.
 

Meet the Filmmakers

Mehra Marzbani — Writer/Actor
Mehra Marzbani is an Iranian-American writer, actor, and emerging filmmaker whose work explores identity, culture, and the complexities of growing up between worlds. She is the writer and star of CucumbHER, a dark comedy body-horror short rooted in her own experiences navigating beauty, assimilation, and belonging as an Iranian-American woman. As a performer, Mehra won the 2023 YoungArts Award in Theater and the 2022 Young Entertainer Award for Best Young Actress in a Web Series for Chicken Girls. She is also the founder of MENArts, an organization dedicated to amplifying Middle Eastern and North African artists and creating community among emerging MENA creatives.

Sahar Jahani — Director
Sahar Jahani is an Iranian-American writer and director whose work explores identity, culture, faith, and the complexities of women navigating multiple worlds. Her television writing credits include the acclaimed series Ramy and Life & Beth. As a filmmaker, she wrote and directed the short film Just One Night, an intimate exploration of friendship, faith, and identity between two young Muslim women. Jahani brings a distinctive sensibility that blends culturally specific storytelling with grounded performances, dry humor, and understated absurdity. She is attached to direct CucumbHER, bringing that perspective to the film’s darkly comic exploration of assimilation, beauty, and belonging.

Medalion Rahim — Producer
Medalion Rahimi is an Iranian-American actor, writer, and producer based in Los Angeles. She is the founder of Saffron Honey Films, a production company dedicated to culturally specific, character-driven storytelling. As a producer, she recently produced and starred in Same Same But Different, which premiered at SXSW and is currently in distribution discussions. Rahimi is also known for her role as Special Agent Fatima Namazi on NCIS: Los Angeles, a groundbreaking character that became the first hijabi Muslim series regular on American network television. She is passionate about championing emerging filmmakers and nuanced stories exploring identity, belonging, womanhood, and the immigrant experience.

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Contact

For inquiries, please contact [email protected].