AJAX
by Habib Yazdi
Directed by Kareem Fahmy
April 22-May 9, 2026
World Premiere

~95 mins, Dark Comedy

A political thriller about the 1953 CIA-backed coup that reshaped Iran. A comedy. Until it isn’t.

It’s a hot summer in August 1953, when a clean-cut American arrives at a peaceful villa in North Tehran. Kambiz, the villa’s gardener and pool boy, wonders if the new guest may be his ticket to a better life. As their friendship deepens, Kambiz finds himself entangled in strange affairs involving the Shah of Iran and the country’s elected prime minister. What happens next shaped the next seventy years of Middle Eastern politics. In this darkly comic spy thriller, a swimming pool becomes a nation, tennis becomes oil politics, and politeness becomes warfare. You’ve never seen American foreign policy look this seductive- or this damning.

How will it end? Only the pool knows…