I Plant My Hand in the Garden: A Family Between Life and Fiction
Updated: Sep 5
83RD VENICE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2026 REVIEW:
Directed by: Hoda Taheri and Boris Hadžija | 2026 | Germany, Serbia, USA | 83 min
-Shahran Morshed
A family is usually something we inherit. A name, a home, certain ideas about what a mother or a father should be. I Plant My Hand in the Garden starts somewhere else, with two people trying to work out what they want their family to become.
Hoda, an Iranian refugee living in Berlin, is pregnant and in a relationship with Boris, a queer man from Serbia. They decide to get married and raise the child together. Their wedding brings their families together, and the film follows the couple as they begin making plans for a life that does not fit neatly into any familiar template.
What makes the film so interesting is how much it manages to do with this simple situation. Hoda's pregnancy, her status as a refugee, Boris's position as a queer man, their marriage and their plans for the child all bring different pressures into the relationship. A bureaucratic problem can suddenly become a personal one; a family conversation can carry the weight of much larger social expectations. The film keeps moving between these scales without making any of them feel like a separate issue.
This makes for a surprisingly political film, but not in the usual sense. There are no long speeches explaining the politics of borders or identity. Instead, those things are simply part of the characters' lives. Institutions, passports and social conventions have consequences because Hoda and Boris have to deal with them themselves.
The film is also constantly changing shape. Taheri and Hadžija play versions of themselves, with members of their real families appearing alongside them. Their own lives become the starting point, but the film keeps playing with what is real and what is constructed. It is difficult to settle into a single way of watching it, and that is part of what makes it so enjoyable. Just when you think you understand where it is going, it finds another direction.
I especially liked its pacing. The film is patient, but rarely feels slow. It gives ordinary conversations and awkward silences enough space to become meaningful. Hoda and Boris are not always trying to solve something. Sometimes they are simply together, and those moments make their relationship feel much more convincing.
There is a lot happening around Hoda's pregnancy, too. The expected arrival of the child gives the film a clear sense of a future approaching, while the couple's present is full of decisions they have not quite figured out yet. Marriage, parenthood and the possibility of a home are all there, but none of them come with a ready-made answer.
Boris's relationship to fatherhood is particularly interesting because the film does not separate it from his queerness. At the same time, Hoda's experience as an Iranian refugee affects the couple in very practical ways, especially through questions of documentation, movement and belonging. These details never feel like information added to make the film political. They are simply part of the life they are trying to build.
The autobiographical element makes the whole thing even more unusual. Knowing that the people around Hoda and Boris are often their actual families changes the feeling of the scenes. There is a sense of watching something personal while also being aware that it has been carefully shaped for the screen.
And the film keeps refusing to behave exactly as expected. Its form, its shifts between the personal and the political, and its uncertain relationship with reality make it difficult to predict. That unpredictability is perhaps its biggest strength.
For a debut feature, I Plant My Hand in the Garden feels remarkably assured. It does not need to tell us what to think about Hoda, Boris or the family they are trying to create. It simply lets us spend time with them and slowly shows us how complicated even the most ordinary idea of starting a family can become.
There is something fitting about the title. Planting is an act of hope, but you never know exactly what will grow. Hoda and Boris are doing much the same thing: putting something into the ground and trying to imagine what kind of life might come from it.
I Plant My Hand in the Garden is an intimate film, certainly, but also a surprisingly inventive one. It finds an unusual way into questions that cinema has addressed many times before, and makes them feel fresh again.
Shahran Morshed / Poet, Filmmaker & Critic
Founder and director of F for Films
Founder and chief-editor of Basically Cinema
Contact : shahran.sp@gmail.com
F for Films : filmsffor@gmail.com
Basically Cinema : basicallycinema@gmail.com
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