Just two weeks before Roya, a banned Iranian journalist, is set to emigrate from Iran to Denmark at her husband’s insistence, she encounters a quiet young girl. The girl seems lost and doesn’t remember anything. Roya takes her in, unaware that the girl has abandoned her previous life and now has come to replace Roya. A couple of days later, Roya finds out that she will be prohibited from leaving Iran unless she sells out a colleague to the government authorities. Soon after Roya refuses to betray her friend, the young girl steals Roya’s identity and takes over her life with the assistance of Roya’s husband, Babak. As Roya fights to recover her identity, she realises, to her surprise, that no one remembers her anymore and that everybody takes the lost girl to be her. Babak throws Roya out of the house, at which point the authorities decide that Roya is to be exiled to another life as a passive housewife named Hanieh.
A true indie film through and through, Elephants takes an authentic look at a modern relationship in a slice of life style, peeling away intimate layers to ask the question: how do you know when someones right for you or rather, when its time to move on? After a three year stint in prison, the charming but hot-headed Lee Riley returns to Los Angeles to win back the girlfriend he left behind, alluring and headstrong Kate Caldwell. Despite having moved on and grown into an independent woman, Kate agrees to let him stay while he looks for an apartment and soon enough, the pair falls back into their old patterns, losing themselves in an ardent relationship once more. Yet, as the free-spirited nature of their romance starts to tear down the life Kate has built, she finds herself losing her new identity but unable to let Lee go. Likewise, Lee starts to wonder if the buoyant memories from their past are preventing him from growing up and becoming something more.