Kiarina Kordela argues that cinema is deeply entangled in biopolitical production, shaping and regulating life within a pervasive system of control. However, drawing on biopoetics and select films from Pahlavi-era Iranian cinema, this article challenges the notion that cinema is fully imprisoned within biopolitics. It contends that cinematic meaning is shaped not only by the filmmaker’s intent but also by audience agency and the interplay of multiple worlds and bodies. Through the creative potential of cinema and its capacity to open imaginative avenues, viewers generate meanings beyond the film’s biopolitical function, disrupting its totalizing force. By foregrounding audience agency, this study reveals how cinema can crack, subvert, and reconfigure biopolitical structures, offering alternative ways of being in the world.