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The first vignette in the Tehran-set Terrestrial Verses observes a man (Bahram Ark) in a hospital trying to register the name of his newborn child. Another shows a rideshare driver, Sadaf (Sadaf Asgari), trying to reclaim her impounded car. The film, written and directed by Ali Asgari and Alireza Khatami, is an assemblage of nine such sequences with no overarching plot or recurring characters. They are all, instead, united by a purposefully minimalist style as they traverse a broader subject matter: Each one unfolds in a lengthy static shot centered on an Iranian citizen arguing with an off-screen authority figure.

The level of conflict differs between each vignette, with some people in a better position to argue than others. But in every scenario, the focal characters are told that their desires are unreasonable or that their behaviors are aberrant, sometimes both. The man in the hospital, for one, submits a name for his child,...

A woman with a lost dog, a small girl performing a TikTok dance in a chador, and a worn-out filmmaker trying to get his movie project off the ground are just three of the characters populating the omnibus of single-take vignettes in writer-directors Alireza Khatami and Ali Asgari’s “Terrestrial Verses.” Combined, these nine stories give off a powerful cumulative effect as we see the petty bureaucracies and paper-pushing quotidian blocks to working-class life unfold and whittle these people down. Cultural, religious, and institutional constraints wear down everyday citizens in Tehran in stories that may lack a beginning, middle, or end but still arrive at a well-drawn if eerie and ambiguous conclusion that would feel dystopic if the events weren’t so ordinary.

The sole Iranian entry in the 2023 Cannes Official Selection, “Terrestrial Verses” opens with a panoramic, widescreen shot of the Tehran cityscape. At first gently and then overwhelmingly,...