3.400KG

1. What was one of the most challenging moments you faced while making 3.400KG? Did this ‘setback’ change the direction of the final story?

For us, the greatest challenge came even before the cameras started rolling: finding an actress who could not only play the paradox of our protagonist’s pain, but truly live it. We were searching for someone who understood, deep within her own bones, what it means to carry the invisible weight of years, burdens that society, family, and life itself quietly press onto our shoulders.

The woman we chose (Forough) had lived with that very weight. And in the final scene, it was no longer “acting.” We asked her not to perform, but to face herself, to see all the pain she had carried, all the moments of not being accepted for who she was, and to let that truth rise to the surface. I left her alone for nearly an hour, with only a piece of music, and when the camera rolled, it was raw, unfiltered, and real. We captured it in a single take. That was our hardest moment, and also our most precious: allowing reality itself to become cinema.

2. What was the biggest inspiration behind 3.400KG?

The seed of this film was planted in a fleeting yet unforgettable moment. We once saw a woman walking down the street, her body heavy, her steps slow. As she passed us, without us asking a single question, she turned, looked straight at us, and with a voice full of sorrow said: “I wasn’t always this big.”

That single sentence pierced us. It was not simply about her body; it was about the silent burden she carried, about years of judgment cast upon her by strangers’ eyes, about the crushing weight of expectations and standards imposed on all of us. It was an uninvited confession, born perhaps from our own unconscious gaze, and it revealed a pain far deeper than appearances.

This moment became the soul of our film. We wanted to capture that pressure not as a number, not merely as kilos on a scale, but as something both physical and emotional, something that every human, especially women, are forced to drag with them through life, unseen yet unbearably heavy.

3. What message do you want the audience to take away from 3.400KG?

Above all, our intention was to reveal pain in its purest form, to make visible the kind of weight that so often remains unseen, yet is carried in silence. We did not want to soften it, disguise it, or offer easy resolutions. Because in life, most of these burdens are never resolved, they are endured.

No one should have to carry such heaviness alone, yet countless people do. By placing that weight at the center of our film, we wanted the audience to not only witness it, but to feel it, if only for a few moments, inside their own bodies. We cannot claim to offer hope, nor can we predict whether such an experience will lead to change. What we know is that truth, when shown without compromise, leaves a mark. Perhaps it unsettles, perhaps it lingers as an aftertaste, perhaps it becomes a mirror to one’s own unspoken burdens. For us, that is enough. To show the pain honestly, and to trust that the very act of seeing might be the beginning of something, whether change, reflection, or simply awareness.