Short film ‘Tethered’ by Alum Diran Shahrik Screens this Friday

A new short film by Diran Shahrik (CGS’21, Questrom’23) called Tethered will be screening this Friday in Newton, MA. The film tells a story about a 17-year-old boy dealing with his father’s physical and emotional abuse. Moreover, it explores the complexities of having a parent with borderline personality disorder. Diran, who currently works in finance at Ernst & Young, won best editing at the HBO-sponsored Official Latino Film & Arts Festival for his work on Picking Daisies.

According to the BU Today article by Sujena Soumyanath (COM’25), Dira says, “Picking Daisies won [best edited film] at an HBO film festival, which was nice. But I remember after that—it’s so funny—I told myself, “I’m not going to do this again. This is so much work. I want to focus on school and finance.” But it’s very addicting—once you start, you kind of can’t stop. I remember sitting in one of my Questrom classrooms and just searching for different ideas, and I wasn’t getting inspired. For me, I had not dealt with this [experience]. It’s one of those things where you kind of suppress it and you push it down, and it was right in front of my face the whole time. So this was an opportunity, not only to show the film, but also, personally, to heal in a way.”

Read more about Diran in the BU Today article ‘Alum’s Short Film Sheds Light on Braving an Abusive Relationship’ here.