Project Detail

Marriage Test

A smartly dressed woman and man sit side by side in a waiting  room, sharing a quiet smile.

Synopsis

Set in a mosque waiting room in 1980s South Wales, and inspired by the true story of writer-director Sara Nourizadeh's parents, a young couple whose relationship crossed boundaries of culture, faith and expectation.
At a time when Iranian politics dominated UK headlines and shaped public attitudes, a Welsh woman and her Iranian fiancé prepare for an Islamic conversion ceremony – a requirement they must fulfil if they are to marry. What follows is a quietly charged and emotionally intimate portrait of two people trying to navigate a moment that is both deeply personal and subtly political. As they wait for the ceremony to begin, small details – a trembling hand, a whispered joke, a fleeting moment of doubt – reveal the emotional stakes beneath the surface. Their conversation dances between humour and tension, affection and uncertainty, reflecting the push and pull of family pressures, cultural misunderstandings, and their own hopes for the future.
Authentic VHS archive footage of the real couple is interwoven within this scripted drama, grounding the film in lived experience and offering an unexpectedly tender glimpse into the decades that followed.

Details

Year
2026
Type of project
Shorts
Running time
11 min 58 sec
Format
ARRI Alexa Mini LF
Director
Sara Nourizadeh
Producer
Roxy Amini
Executive Producer
Alice Lusher, Matthew Barry, Ali Mashayekhi, Jessica Cobham-Dineen
Editor
Andy Sowerby
Screenwriter
Sara Nourizadeh
Director of Photography
Markus Ilschner
Production Designer
Rana Fadavi
Sound
Nick Sounidis
Composer
Marcin Mazurek
Principal cast
Arian Nik, Poppy Lee Friar

Categories

Production Status

Production Company

Supported by BFI NETWORK, Ffilm Cymru Wales

Field Day Films Ltd

Roxy Amini

Page updates

This page was last updated on 19th January 2026. Please let us know if we need to make any amendments or request edit access by clicking below.

See also

You may also be interested in other relevant projects in the database.

Moderation Moderation

Director: Benedict Cohen

Year: 2026

To cope with their gruesome job, two content moderators start having sex at work. But they must battle with their new-found addiction to trauma bonding, lest it consume them.

A boy and girl, both 20-something, stare into each other's eyes while touching hands in a dark bar. The image is high contrast, grainy, and tinted orange. To All The Girls I Never Banged: I'm Sorry

Director: Harry Plowden

Year: 2026

A dark secret is exposed when Ed and Nath, two Brits abroad, compete for the same girl while leading a hostel bar crawl in Budapest. Official Selection Slamdance Film Festival 2026 - World premiere

Kowloon City Culture Tour SightNotSeeing

Director: Sheung Man Yim

Year: 2026

SIGHTNOTSEEING captures a cultural tour in post-colonial Kowloon, around the remnants of the Walled City, but not the kind of tour you'd expect. Filmed in a single overhead long take, it drifts through performance, misunderstanding, and (post-)truth, held together by confusion and just enough confidence to carry on. Official Selection International Film Festival Rotterdam 2026 - World premiere