To drive through it was both to experience a kind of cinematic thrill and attain a level of comprehension only the movies could prepare you for. By the time the 2010’s rolled around, audiences were primed for a foreign-film conquest.

It is never easy to choose favourites from Iranian cinema. The flame survives against the odds, it burns even as the world grows more hostile. How do you then make a list that leaves out Majid Majidi’s Children of Heaven (1997): which can very well be read as a crossing where Premchand’s humanism might have met Satyajit Ray’s gentle gaze?

This article was originally published in June 2023. Thanks to a renewed interest in Iranian cinema among movie lovers, we are republishing it with two additional films. For centuries, poetry was Iran’s most prominent cultural export. Since the Iranian ...

With eerie relevance, this week also happens to mark the start of the BAMPFA series Iranian Cinema: From Aesthetics to Politics (Sat/7-April 23), so you have an opportunity to familiarize yourself with the inconveniently human side of the nation we’re now bombing to smithereens.

Iranian Protagonist Of Oscar-Nominated Documentary ‘Cutting Through Rocks’ Will Not Make It To Academy Awards Ceremony

This meaningful film is written and directed by Narges Abyar. Drawing upon her experiences during the Iranian revolution, Abyar tells us the story of Bahar, a young girl who lives with her grandmother while her father is off on the frontlines. This film ...

Understanding one of the world's oldest civilizations can't be achieved through a single film or book. But recent works of literature, journalism, music and film by Iranians are a powerful starting point.

The rise of a post-hijab aesthetic and rejections of linear narratives and techniques have given way to a new Iranian underground cinema. Here's a deep dive into its evolution. With the rise of avant-garde filmmakers in the 1960s, Iran‘s New Wave emerged ...

Even before Saeed Roustayee’s “Woman and Child” premieres at the upcoming Cannes Film Festival, the Iranian director’s new work is sparking heated controversy that reflects deep soul searching within the turbulent country’s filmmaking community.

Mohammad Rasoulof, the celebrated Iranian filmmaker whose work has put him in deep conflict with authorities in Tehran, called Ayatollah Ali Khamenei "the most hated figure in the contemporary history of Iran" following the supreme leader's death in a U.