Reviews
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Asghar Farhadi’s Fireworks Wednesday (2006): Truth, Lies, and Censorship
Fireworks Wednesday (Chaharshanbe-Suri, 2006) is a key film in Asghar Farhadi’s career. Compared with his more straightforward early films, Dancing in the Dust (Raqs dar Ghobar, 2003) and The Beautiful…
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Jafar Panahi’s Life (2021): Embracing Otherness
An iguana slowly makes his way through a spacious apartment in Tehran. He looks through the closed balcony doors. Outside, a crow sits against the backdrop of the snow-capped Alborz…
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Ali Abbasi’s Holy Spider (2022): Freedom and the Loss of Subtlety
For centuries, Iranian culture has cultivated a language of implication, metaphor, and layered meaning. Medieval Persian poetry found ways to explore politically and socially sensitive subjects without addressing them directly.…
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Hit the Road (2021): Panah Panahi’s Road Movie of Death and Rebirth
If you spend any time traveling across Iran, you will quickly notice a recurring sentiment among young people in the country’s major cities: many dream of leaving. Years of economic…
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Amir Naderi’s The Runner (1984): Motion, Memory, and Survival
Amir Naderi’s The Runner (Davandeh, 1984) is one of the defining works of 1980s Iranian cinema. It was among the first Iranian films to attract significant international attention after the…
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Jafar Panahi’s The White Balloon (1995): Iranian Society Through a Child’s Eyes
Jafar Panahi’s feature debut The White Balloon (Badkonak-e Sefid, 1995) demonstrates how much can be expressed through economical storytelling. What begins as a simple story about a young girl gradually unfolds into…
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Persepolis (2007): Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud’s Timeless Story of Identity and Exile
Following the recent passing of Marjane Satrapi, this is an appropriate moment to revisit Persepolis (2007), the animated feature she co-directed with Vincent Paronnaud. Adapted from Satrapi’s autobiographical graphic novels,…
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It Was Just an Accident (2025): Jafar Panahi’s Divine Comedy of Inner Freedom
After his release from prison, Iranian director Jafar Panahi returned with It Was Just an Accident (Yek tasadof-e sadeh, 2025), abandoning the veiled allegory of his earlier work for a…
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Jafar Panahi’s Hidden (2020): An Exploration of Voice and Resistance
Hidden (2020) is one of Jafar Panahi’s quietest films—and yet also one of his most intense. The seemingly inescapable situation is not overcome by the irony Panahi often relied on in…
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The Stranger and the Fog (1974): Bahram Beyzaie’s Fusion of Ritual and Modernism
Legendary Iranian New Wave filmmaker Bahram Beyzaie passed away recently, but his masterpiece The Stranger and the Fog (Gharibeh va Meh, 1974) endures—helped in no small part by its recent restoration. Visually hypnotic and…
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Pari (2020) by Siamak Etemadi: An Archetypal Journey in Iranian Diaspora Cinema
The search for a son in a foreign city turns into a purifying ritual by fire. Pari (2020) is not only a social drama about Iranian immigrants in Greece, but…
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Sun Children (2020): Searching for Light in Majid Majidi’s Social Drama
Majid Majidi’s film Sun Children (Khorshid, 2020) highlights the struggles of socially disadvantaged children. Through realistic storytelling, compelling performances, and symbolic use of light and space, the film delivers a…