OPEN THE DOOR
presents
TREES ARE WATCHING
Written + Directed by Bahman Ghobadi
Starring EVA GREEN
World Premiere Screening
Friday September 18, 2026
6:00pm
TIFF Lightbox Cinema 1
PRESS RELEASE
Award-winning Kurdish-Iranian filmmaker, Bahman Ghobadi (A Time for Drunken Horses, Turtles Can Fly, Rhino Season) returns to the Toronto International Film Festival with the World Premiere of TREES ARE WATCHING. The acclaimed director turns to psychological horror in a deeply personal story shaped by exile and a haunting connection to the land.
The film stars Eva Green, Murat Yıldırım, Lucas Akoskin, Zeynep Çamcı and Neva Kus.
Written and directed by Ghobadi, TREES ARE WATCHING follows Darya (Eva Green), a novelist who returns with her deaf daughter to her hometown of Mardin, where the surrounding land has been ravaged by deforestation. Two trees remain, planted in memory of two sisters Darya knew as a child. One of them, the visionary Nihal, believed in a Kurdish legend that humans could be reincarnated as trees, only to experience a second life when those trees are cut down. As the past begins to intrude upon the present, long-buried memories surface and an increasingly sinister presence takes hold.
The film marks a striking turn into supernatural horror for Ghobadi, whose internationally acclaimed work has often reflected the Kurdish experience and the human cost of political upheaval. Here, he uses genre to look at exile from another direction. Darya is struggling with haunting memories rooted in a shared past of intergenerational trauma, which has fuelled her obsession as a writer with the relationship between humans and trees. Her return home forces her to confront what happens when our connection to the place we once called home has been severed, and whether some part of that connection can ever truly be left behind.
“TREES ARE WATCHING emerged, in part, from the nightmares that have haunted my eighteen years of exile,” says Ghobadi. “It is also shaped by poetry, by haiku, and by my readings on the possibility of an afterlife – an idea in which I believe. In writing the screenplay and tracing the invisible bond between humanity and the natural world, I found myself reflecting deeply on conscience, memory, and the nature of existence. I sought to weave these reflections, together with the darker and more fragile recesses of the human soul, into the cinematic language of suspense.”
For Green, whose career has moved effortlessly between intimate drama and the fantastical, the film also offers an unusually affecting screen relationship. She has described TREES ARE WATCHING as a “modern ecological fable” and has spoken warmly about working with young deaf actor Neva Kus, who plays her daughter, praising her intelligence and sensitivity and describing her as one of her most memorable acting partners.
TREES ARE WATCHING also brings Ghobadi back to a festival with particular significance in his career. His Rhino Season, starring Behrouz Vossoughi and Monica Bellucci, had its World Premiere at TIFF in 2012.
“Toronto holds a singular place in my journey as a filmmaker,” says Ghobadi. “To return to Toronto all these years later with TREES ARE WATCHING carries immense personal significance for me. I am deeply honoured that TIFF is giving this film the opportunity to encounter audiences from across the world.”
TREES ARE WATCHING is written and directed by Bahman Ghobadi and produced by Seyfi Sahin, Bahman Ghobadi, Lydia Dean Pilcher, and Golriz Ehtiati; with cinematography by Saba Mazloum, editing by Farbod Khoshtinat, production design by Babak Tahmili, art and costume design supervision and prop design by Esra Karadeniz, and music by Bamdad Afshar. The film is presented by Open the Door and is a MIJ Film production.