Based on The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, Here Without Me details the world of a small family with soured dreams and in near poverty. An ageing single mother, Farideh (Fatemeh Motamed-Arya), holds down two jobs to help support her family, and struggles to raise her two grown-up kids – the timid, crippled daughter, Yalda, and her son, Ehsan – in Tehran. She is urgently trying her best to find a suitor for the introvert Yalda, a disabled girl who has a deep interest in collecting glass animals. Yalda harbours a secret attraction towards her brother Ehsan’s best friend, Reza. Ehsan, whose voiceover introduces the film, writes poetry and desperately aspires to leave Iran. He dreams of being a writer and spends his spare time haunting cinemas and watching old movies over and over.