Heaven Will Wait is a short narrative film about an Iranian-American woman in her mid-twenties who rushes to save her parents' U.S. visa appointment while visiting her wedding venue at Untermyer Gardens in the Hudson Valley, after a new U.S. travel ban on Iran takes effect.
Hanieh immigrated from Iran to the United States to get her PhD in physics. Every year she tried to bring her parents here on a tourist visa so she could show them the streets she walks, the campus, and the small apartment she furnished herself. It didn't happen because she is Iranian, and the visa acceptance rate is low. Then, in 2025, the travel ban happened and made it even worse. During these years, her life has changed. She moved cities, she received recognition for her research, she ran marathons, and she met the love of her life. Yet the only way she could share any of this with her parents was through the screen of her phone and the photos she sent them.
This is the story of many people who are successful, and will be, but nobody sees how every year, every six months, they have to gather their papers, prepare their documents, and start proving again that they have a right to exist. Their success, their happiness, their heaven still depends on a stack of paperwork. This film holds all the birthdays she is missing, the fights, and the laughs she is not there for, and all the hands she can't hold as her parents get older. This is the story she needs to tell now, before more of those moments disappear.