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Film Spotlight
Iran has a rich cinematic history. The 2011 film A Separation won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film in 2012, becoming the first Iranian film to win the very prestigious award. You can check out the film or watch it on-campus at the Mugar Library. The trailer is available below:
Featured Films
- Under the shadow = زىر ساىه (streaming, Kanopy) Living among the chaos of the Iran-Iraq war Shideh is left to protect her young daughter, Dorsa. When a missile hits their apartment building but fails to explode, Shideh learns from a superstitious neighbor that the cursed missile might have brought in djinns - malevolent spirits that travel on the wind.
- Nasrin (streaming, Academic Video Online) In the courts and on the streets, Nasrin has long fought for the rights of women, children, LGBTQ, religious minorities, journalists, artists, and those facing the death penalty. She was arrested in June 2018 and sentenced to 38 years in prison, plus 148 lashes. Even from prison, she has continued to challenge the authorities.
- The Ladies Room (streaming, Ethnographic Video Online) Filmed in a woman's restroom located in a public park in Iran's metropolitan center of Tehran, this documentary explodes Western stereotyping of women in Iran. The elder who runs the washroom offers a shoulder to cry on or tough love in a place where women, many of them especially marginalized because they are prostitutes, addicts or runaways, feel safe enough to remove their veils, and draw on cigarettes and their opinions on a wide range of subjects that men cannot hear them speaking about: sex, family abuse, relationships, drugs, religion, self-mutilation. The director (and admired actress) supplies the audience with an unflinching, detailed examination of the lives of the women who use the restroom as a gathering place.
- My Mother's Home, Lagoon (streaming, Academic Video Online) Like Kurosawa's Woman in the Dunes, 67-year-old Kobra battles the elements on a lagoon in Iran to eke out a living for herself and her 100-year-old invalid mother. Even on New Year's day she is out in her rowboat before dawn, dropping and hauling her nets for the modest catch. She must argue fiercely with the men in the marketplace for a fair price, and physically battle fishermen on the water who claim the territory where her nets are placed. In an unforgettable scene the men tear her nets and scuffle with her on the deck until she falls into the water. Mother and daughter live together in a weather- beaten cottage on the edge of the lagoon. Pictures of their deceased loved ones surround them. The Koran, the voice of the mullahs on the radio, and their love for one another sustain them. With simplicity and honesty, this documentary makes a universal statement of the harsh realities many women face, and the strength that sustains them.
- Amin (streaming, Academic Video Online) Amin is the story of an ancient musical tradition and one man’s struggle to preserve it. It is told using a unique approach to documentary storytelling that challenges the boundaries of fiction and reality. Amin Aghaie is a young modern nomad from the south of Iran. He has dedicated his life to preserving, documenting and teaching the unique musical tradition of his people, the Qashqai tribe, a tradition on the verge of extinction. Despite the fact that Amin's family face steep financial and cultural obstacles, they are devoted to their art and culture and express that by supporting the work of their talented musician son. Every summer, Amin travels to remote towns and villages to record the music of the surviving masters whose numbers decline each year. His nomadic family sells their meager belongings to help support their son's education in performance and ethnomusicology at Tchaikovsky's Conservatory in Kiev, Ukraine, but it is not enough. Amin, desperate to finish his academic education, sells his violins one at a time just to pay for his tuition.
- Enclose (streaming, Academic Video Online) A few British tourists, who are exploring the forests of Northern Iran, are mysteriously murdered. Major Mohebi is called in to investigate the case, in spite of his recent loss of his wife and unborn child. Through his investigations, Major Mohebi becomes increasingly entangled in the local folklore, as he unravels the mysteries of a village that the other locals both fear and stay clear of.
- Seven Blind Women Filmmakers (streaming, Academic Video Online) In Spring 2004, Mohd Shirvani decided to answer an old question in his mind - What should I do if I, as a film director, would become blind? I was wondering if I could keep making films. This film has been made by a number of blind women filmmakers to answer that question. I taught them how to narrate their own stories through film language with small digital cameras and they also taught me how to see the world with my third eye on my forehead. The result of this experience is a feature episodic documentary 7 Blind Female Filmmakers.
- Raami (streaming, Academic Video Online) After ten years spent in a refugee camp in Sabirabad, a middle-aged Azerbaijani folk composer goes in search of his Armenian wife and their child, from whom he was separated during the Azerbaijan-Armenian conflict. His quest - which parallels the Azerbaijani folktale of the two lovers, Asli and Karam, is paired with a lyrical and detailed depiction of the musician's memories of his wife and the traditional music about which he is so passionate. Raami explores the relationships between nature, war, music, and folklore.
- Iran: Behind the Veil (streaming, Academic Video Online) National Geographic photographer Alexandra Avakian has secured the deepest access to Iran of any U.S. photographer since the 1979 revolution. Alex's unprecedented access gives viewers a glimpse of Iranian life"”from the youth culture and the women behind the veils to politically charged prayer meetings and the timeless beauty of this remarkable land.
- Devil on the Roof (streaming, Academic Video Online) The celebrated Iranian photographer, Nasrollah Kasraian and his wife, anthropologist Ziba Arshi, have documented many unique populations living within the borders of Iran. This film provides a fascinating look at the Turkmans of Iran, who live in small villages northeast of Teheran, near the Afghanistan border.
- Fireworks Wednesday (streaming, Academic Video Online) A story of marital intrigue and betrayal set against the backdrop of the Persian New Year from the Academy Award winning director of A Separation.
- DAF (streaming, Academic Video Online) This simple but affecting documentary portrays a rural craftsman who makes a traditional Iranian percussion instrument called a daf.
- The Dervishes of Kurdistan (streaming, Academic Video Online) A community of Kurds resident in Iran on the border with Iraq forms the subject of this film. Many of the inhabitants of the community are refugees from Kurdish areas of Iraq and the villagers are Qadiri Dervishes – followers of an ecstatic mystical cult of Islam.
- The Last Queen Of The Earth (streaming, Academic Video Online) Alibakhsh is an Afghani who has been forced to leave his wife, his family, and his home in order to find a job. He makes his way to Iran where he secures work in a henna grinding plant. While he is happy to be able to support his family from afar, Alibakhsh looks forward to the day when he can be reunited with them. However, fate conspires to keep Alibakhsh and his family apart as a US-led invasion in Afghanistan becomes imminent in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Ali attempts to return to his homeland to find his family before war and chaos make it all but impossible. This powerful film has won several international awards, but has been banned from being shown in Iran.
- Our Summer in Tehran (streaming, Academic Video Online) Our Summer in Tehran, transports us into the seldom seen realm of middle class family life in Iran, transcending overt politics for a perspective Western media has little interest in showing
- Persepolis (streaming, Academic Video Online) Based on her autobiographical graphic novels, Marjane Satrapi and co-screenwriter Vincent Paronnaud directed this Oscar-nominated animated film about a free-spirited Iranian girl who is sent to live in Austria when fundamentalists take over during the Islamic Revolution.
- A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (streaming, Kanopy) Strange things are afoot in Bad City. The Iranian ghost town, home to prostitutes, junkies, pimps, and other sordid souls, is a place that reeks of death and hopelessness, where a lonely vampire is stalking the towns most unsavory inhabitants. But when boy meets girl, an unusual love story begins to blossom...blood red. The first Iranian Vampire Western, Ana Lily Amirpour's debut feature A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night basks in the sheer pleasure of pulp.
- Time for drunken horses (streaming, Kanopy) The heart-wrenching drama of a Kurdish family living on the Iran-Iraq border. The only work available in this poverty-stricken locale is to smuggle goods between the countries, through hills stalked by armed bandits.
- Crimson gold = طلاى سرخ (streaming, Kanopy) Hussein is a pizza deliveryman in Tehran. Wounded in the Iraq-Iran war, he suffers from an unnamed illness for which he takes "medication." When not delivering pizza, he and his naïve, talkative friend Ali are petty thieves.
- City Walls -My Own Private Tehran (streaming, Academic Video Online) In this disarmingly intimate and revealing film three generations of women in an Iranian family describe their struggles for survival within marriages founded on Iranian traditions. The filmmaker’s grandmother was married at 13 to a ne’er-do-well who spent what little money there was on opium and drinking. She became a maid and a wet nurse in order to earn enough to feed her six daughters.
- Two Women (Milani) (dvd) This film is a bold, dramatic attack on the treatment of women in post-revolutionary Iran by Tahmineh Milani, the country's outspoken feminist filmmaker. The story follows the friendship of two university students. While one is able to find a good job and a happy marriage, the other is subhected to the most severe inequities of the male-dominated, fundamentalist society. Farsi dialog with English subtitles.
- Jews of Iran (streaming, Academic Video Online) Largely forgotten by the rest of the world, Iran is home to the largest Jewish population in the Middle East outside of Israel. After the revolution in 1979, a majority of the Jews fled, many to the United States, but 25,000 still remain. How are they faring?
- Googoosh: Iran's Daughter (dvd) Googoosh was Iran's most famous and beloved pop diva, until she was silenced following the 1979 Islamic revolution when female singers were labeled "œtemptresses" and forbidden to release records or perform publicly in the presence of men. In this award-winning documentary from First Run Features, Googoosh: Iran's Daughter, Iranian-American filmmaker Farhad Zamani provides a thoughtful examination of the phenomenon of Googoosh.
- Shirin (Subtitled) (dvd) Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami ("Taste of Cherry") takes a strict and unusual approach to demonstrating the power of cinema in this challenging drama by setting the entire action inside a movie theater screening an epic film adaptation of a 12th-century work of poetry--and then never showing a single frame of the film. Instead, Kiarostami's lens focuses exclusively on the powerful reactions of the female members in the audience
- The Circle (Subtitled) (dvd) This film by Jafar Panahi is an honest, disturbing look at the plight of ordinary Iranian women dealing with institutionalized political and sexual repression. Screenplay by Kambozia Partovi. Banned by the Iranian government, THE CIRCLE won honors at the Venice Film Festival. Farsi dialog with English subtitles.
- The Hidden Half (Subtitled) (dvd) Fundamentalists in Iran objected to the sympathetic portrayal of those who fought against the Islamic Revolution in Tahmineh Milani's controversial film. It is a story of a woman remembering her affair with a married man in the aftermath of the overthrow of the Shah. Farsi dialog with English subtitles.
