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Many independent filmmakers have to find ways of making limited resources work, but few purposefully restrict themselves to one blank setting. Even fewer turn that setting into something fascinating. Homayoun Ghanizadeh’s Oh, What Happy Days! features five actors in similar clothes, all set against a grey background, in an avant-garde method the director calls “Suitcase Cinema”.

Golshifteh Farahani plays Homa, an actress confronted with blackmail by a possible government agent (Navid Mohammadzadeh) regarding the ownership of her family home, which he makes a claim on in connection through his father. Starting a group video call, she enlists her aunt (Shirin Neshat) and her uncle (Payman Maadi), to help convince Homa’s grandfather (Ali Nasirian) to agree to the deal, but political and personal grudges threaten to tear everything apart.

The initial concept may not sound terribly exciting, with each actor roughly looking the same and the film mostly shot in black-and-white (bar a few colour flourishes). However, there is something more happening beneath the surface. Small movements, such as the placement of each character in the call’s onscreen “order”, tell us a little bit about what’s happening between those locked in conversation, negotiation, and argument.

It also leaves the cast nowhere to hide, which brings out some fantastic choices from the quintet. Farahani’s ebb and flow between desperation and outrage; Maadi’s mix of aggression and reason; Maadi’s mean-spirited jabs… all come together to tell a story of family and identity that is absorbing, as if you were in on the call yourself.

It’s a reminder of how history splits family trees to the root. The shadow of the 1979 revolution looms large over the conversation, with many anecdotes framed as either before or after, and small details like currency or square meters highlighting the fact that while there is the familiarity of blood, politics have distanced these people both physically and ideologically.

Such a mental battle can require a lot of confrontation, and perhaps a steel constitution for those who find confrontation onscreen uncomfortable. However, there’s something joyous about this film’s sheer existence, given the behind-the-scenes context. Actors inside Iran interact with those banished or banned from the country, with Farahani making her first appearance in an Iranian film since being exiled in 2009.

For all the talk of AI threatening the soul of cinema, another technology has allowed it to break down walls. The presentation of a video call is something we all understand, and through that frame people who would never be able to work together in person share the same screen. There’s something quite moving about that, and in a story that contains so much political background, it makes the narrative device more than a simple gimmick.

As inventive a film as you’ll see all year, Oh, What Happy Days! is a tough watch at times but one that offers layer upon layer of insight and revelation. Ghanizadeh pushes the envelope of cinematic storytelling not through clever tricks, but by stripping a film down to its bare elements and finding something compelling underneath.

Oh, What Happy Days! just premiered in the Critics’s Picks strand of the 29th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival.