MIOB In Shorts review: Found & Lost (2025)
MIOB In Shorts
Official Selection
Courtesy of Lemonade Films
An elderly man is reminded that no good deeds go unpunished in Reza Rasouli’s smartly plotted short drama “Found & Lost”, which competes for the MOIB In Shorts Award on the “This Is Short” platform.
Tamim (Abdolelah Farhoud) is used to handling things on his own. When the residential building where he lives with his family falls in darkness after a power outage, he runs to the fuse box to fix it, ignoring his wife and daughter’s protests and his Austrian neighbour, who’s threatening to inform the authorities. In a land of strictly defined bureaucratic laws about almost everything, his actions are seen as unacceptable.
Rasouli, one of the few filmmaker immigrant voices in an otherwise very white Austrian filmic landscape, puts his hero in a situation that challenges the old man’s moral perspective. Tamim, whose past is never revealed and who probably has vast working experience, is left with only a few options to provide for his family. The septuagenarian works as a hygiene technician in a Viennese nightclub, maintaining clients’ toilets. One evening, he finds a wallet containing cocaine, left inside the toilet cubicle by a man he previously asked to leave to make room for others queuing. He decides to return it personally to avoid trouble both for him and the man. That this doesn’t go that well is needless to say.
In his seventh short, the Iran-born, Vienna-based filmmaker continues to explore the hardships of immigrants in Austria by presenting a simple yet intricate story of a silent cultural clash. Rasouli doesn’t give us definite answers, only bits and pieces of a larger puzzle surrounding his main protagonist’s actions & reactions. “Found&Lost” is a heartwarming micro portrait of a man at the margins.
“Found & Lost” has bagged multiple awards at international film festivals. Among them: Best Film at the Alpinale Kurzfilmfestival, Student Visionary Award at Tribeca, Best Sound Design/ Social Responsibility Award/ Honourable Mention in Competition at Vienna Shorts and Audience Award at Trieste Film Festival.
Link to the film on the “This Is Short” platform, where you can also cast your vote:
https://thisisshort.filmchief.com/hub/viewing-details/1263?sec=[sec]&back=catalog
Film teaser on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/Db2LKMgS_KW/
Original Title: Found&Lost
Country: Austria
Language: German, Persian. English
Runtime: 17’22”
Director: Reza Rasouli
Screenplay: Reza Rasouli
Producer: Jakob Serdaroglu, Philip Ivancsics, Reza Rasouli
Cinematographer: Konstantin Johann
Sound recording: Mathias Edelmann, Alexander Römisch
Editor: Jonathan Meiri
Production design: Sophie Rieser
Colour correction: Konstantin Johann
Sound Design: Ramin Abusedgh
Supported by MA7, Filmakademie Wien.
