The 2020 Iranian film Bi Hameh Chiz (Without Everything), inspired by Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s play The Visit, narrates the story of social tensions and structural violence in a remote village, culminating in a collective agreement to sacrifice one of the inhabitants. This study applies René Girard’s philosophical–cultural anthropology to examine two key mechanisms in his theoretical framework—mimetic desire and the scapegoat mechanism—within the film’s narrative structure. The article’s analytical framework combines anthropology, philosophy, sociology, mythology, social psychology, and film studies, and draws comparative references to examples from literature and myth, juxtaposing them with the situations depicted in the film. The analysis demonstrates how mimetic desire in the relationships between characters—especially the shifting positions of “mediator” and “object” between Lili and Amirkhan—drives social tension to a crisis point, leading the community to resort to the archaic scapegoat mechanism as a means of restoring apparent order. The findings indicate that, although the scapegoat mechanism in modern societies appears in altered, more ‘civilised’ forms, it continues to operate at the level of the collective unconscious and in political–social behaviours. At times, it is reproduced in ways that appear rational or socially sanctioned. These results underscore the necessity of interdisciplinary analysis of cultural productions in order to reveal the hidden layers of violence and persistent archetypal behavioural patterns in contemporary societies.