Mourning the Past to Protect the Future

Read Time:4 Minute, 59 Second

MOVIE REVIEW
There Will Come Soft Rains
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Genre: Drama, Short
Year Released: 2025
Runtime: 15m
Director(s): Elham Ehsas
Writer(s): Elham Ehsas, Sam Perry
Cast: Olivia D’Lima, Priya Davdra, Arjun Singh Panam, Rachel Redford
Where to Watch: shown at the Aspen Shortsfest, HollyShorts Film Festival, and Raindance Film Festival

RAVING REVIEW: THERE WILL COME SOFT RAINS approaches the climate crisis from a place most films avoid; not through end-of-days scenarios, statistics, or apocalyptic imagery, but through grief, faith, and a single woman’s refusal to accept inevitability. It is a short film with an inspiring premise and the discipline to explore it without sensationalizing it. Rather than asking audiences to fear the future, it asks them to sit with a present that already feels unbearable for those carrying the burden first.

The story centers on Mira, a British-Pakistani woman haunted by the rising sea levels that threaten her home and her father’s resting place. The central story, trying to exhume her father’s grave to move him to higher ground, is not framed with shock. Instead, it plays out as an extension of love, grief, and survival. The film treats this decision as something deeply human, even as it pits Mira against religious and community expectations and long-held traditions. What makes the premise hit is how calmly the film presents it. The weight comes from inevitability, not provocation.

Olivia D’Lima anchors the film with a performance that is controlled, grounded, and meticulous. Mira is not written as impulsive or reckless; she is measured, exhausted, and resolute. D’Lima plays her with a steady pressure, conveying fear without hysteria and defiance without bravado. There is a constant sense that Mira has already gone through every argument in her head before the film begins. What we witness is not indecision, but resolve colliding with resistance.

Priya Davdra’s Fatima offers an essential counterbalance. Where Mira is laser-focused, Fatima represents memory, tradition, and caution. Their dynamic avoids easy binaries. The film never paints one woman as enlightened and the other as regressive. Instead, it allows both positions to exist in tension, acknowledging how faith and survival can pull people in different directions without making either wrong.

Arjun Singh Panam’s Baba, though present largely through memory and absence, looms over the entire narrative. The film understands that death does not end responsibility; it often intensifies it. Baba’s grave becomes a symbol of both reverence and vulnerability, forcing Mira to confront what honoring the dead means in a world that is physically changing beneath her feet.

Director Elham Ehsas approaches the material with clarity. The film resists the urge to explain itself or underline its themes. Climate change is not treated as an abstract global issue but as a real-world condition; something that dictates choices long before politicians or institutions respond. Developed in collaboration with Climate Spring, the film shifts away from guilt-based storytelling toward emotion, embedding the crisis inside family and spiritual conflict rather than public discourse.

Visually, THERE WILL COME SOFT RAINS leans into a subdued palette that mirrors its emotional state. The environments feel heavy, damp, and unyielding; spaces shaped by both weather and tradition. The film’s visual language supports its themes without becoming illustrative. Nothing is overstated. The camera observes rather than judges, allowing moments of stillness to do the work that dialogue often would in a less confident film.

The film’s engagement with Muslim faith is handled with care. It neither exoticizes belief nor treats it as an obstacle to be overcome. Instead, faith is presented as a living system of meaning that can be both sustaining and restrictive depending on circumstance. Mira’s defiance is not framed as rejection of faith, but as reinterpretation; an attempt to reconcile spiritual duty with physical reality. That distinction matters, especially in a genre that often simplifies belief systems for narrative convenience.

Certain relationships and pressures could deepen further with additional runtime. The film gestures toward broader social consequences without exploring them, which may leave some viewers wanting more about the community response. That said, the restraint largely works in the film’s favor, keeping the focus locked on Mira’s internal and emotional stakes rather than expanding outward into commentary.

THERE WILL COME SOFT RAINS thrives because it reframes climate storytelling as an intimate reckoning rather than a warning siren. It understands that for many people, the crisis is already here; not as an abstract threat, but as a daily negotiation between memory, belief, and survival. By grounding its urgency in love and defiance rather than fear, the film delivers a powerful reminder that the climate crisis is not only about what we lose, but about what we refuse to abandon.

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[photo courtesy of AZANA FILMS, MONO FILM PRODUCTIONS]

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