In Toronto, three women from different generations and Middle Eastern backgrounds—Kurdish, Persian, and Turkish—navigate the challenges of migration, loss, and resilience, connected through the eyes and journey of Kajal, a middle-aged mother trying to reconcile past and present.
The film takes place in Toronto, a city that is both a place of settlement and a landscape of dislocation for three migrant women attempting to rebuild their lives.
Kajal, a middle-aged Kurdish woman, moves between multiple jobs to survive. She works as an Uber driver and in a Kurdish restaurant. On the surface, she is trying to build a new life in Canada, but emotionally she remains suspended between her children in Toronto, her mother still in Iran, and a home she can no longer fully access. Repeated disruptions in communication with Iran, uncertainty about her family, and constant financial pressure keep her in a state of ongoing anxiety. Canada becomes both an opportunity for survival and a painful distance from everything she loves.
Shahla, a retired university professor and former political activist, has lived in exile for years. She lives alone in a house filled with books and memories in downtown Toronto, carrying unresolved grief from her past. Encounters with a younger generation of migrants, as well as the political tensions of the present, continuously pull her back into a history that has never truly ended. For her, life in Canada is not the end of resistance but another form of continuation—yet exhaustion and loneliness blur the line between endurance and collapse.
Sojin, a young film student, stands between two worlds: a family displaced from Turkey, now struggling with economic and emotional instability, and the world of cinema, which offers her a way of observing and understanding reality. In Canada, she tries to make sense of life through her camera, but the more she looks outward, the more she is confronted with her own internal conflicts and her father’s quiet breakdown—a man who measures his political past against his present fragility.
The lives of these three women gradually and subtly intersect across Toronto—in an Uber ride, a political gathering, a university space, or in ordinary everyday encounters. Political events in Iran, disrupted communications, media rumours, and migration crises constantly seep into their daily lives, dissolving the boundary between “here” and “there.”
Set against the backdrop of migrant life in Canada, the film explores how women carrying heavy pasts, loss, and political and personal memory attempt to construct new identities in a new society—without ever fully detaching from what came before. WHEN THE SOUND CUTS OFF is a story about continuing to live through sudden silences, broken connections, and the fragile attempt to be heard in a world that is constantly shifting.
Shilan Saadi is a Kurdish filmmaker and documentarian based in Canada. Her work focuses on historical memory, women’s stories, and social justice, highlighting underrepresented voices. Her films have screened internationally and are recognized for their human-centered and truthful storytelling.
