ABSTRACT Socially oriented documentary films are increasingly expected to articulate “impact” goals to gain international distribution, yet what counts as impact for those represented remains contested. This article examines how narratives about working and displaced youth in Iran are produced and circulated through social filmmaking. Global campaigns construct single‐issue narratives that obscure structural violence and resonate with geopolitical savior discourses. By contrast, collaborations between Iranian NGOs and filmmakers generate more complex portrayals, carefully mediating children's stories to avoid harm while showing everyday experiences of inequality. These films embody practices of care in both process and representation, resonating with feminist and multimodal anthropology. While one “heroic victim” (Nash 2022a) may achieve global visibility, such hyperfocus overshadows the everyday labor of NGO staff, volunteers, and young people themselves working to interrupt intergenerational cycles of inequality. These local humanitarians remain largely invisible internationally, even as their efforts have the most direct and material impact on children's lives. This article is not a critique of humanitarians or humanitarianism, but rather an analysis of the humanitarian impulse in highly visible films. I argue that it is through this impulse that the stated “impact” of a film can be displaced from the communities and issues represented, overshadowing local humanitarian efforts.
Nat Nesvaderani (Tue,) studied this question.