A child’s imagination can provide relief from stress, anxiety and trauma, explains psychologist Charlotte Reznick in a video on the parenting website Kids in the House. For Bahar, the little girl in the 2016 film Breath, this claim proves true. Set in central Iran in the 1970s and ’80s, the dramatic motion picture follows Bahar, played by Sareh Nour Mousavi, as she escapes her chaotic world through books, daydreams and fantasies. Writer and director Narges Abar drew on her own experiences to make the movie, shown in Farsi with English subtitles. The Vermont International Film Festival presents this Academy Award submission at Burlington’s Main Street Landing Performing Arts Center.