In this article, I examine four movies, Offside, Cold Sweat, Hair, and Orca, to discuss how these movies address several central themes in women’s sports in Iran, including gender segregation in sports spaces, the socio-cultural…

Ethnographic filmmaking—defined as making films that represent one culture to another or to itself—emerged in Iran in the 1960s, driven by many factors, such as rapid modernization and the resulting population displacements and psychic and…

Introduction In this entry, I trace the trajectory of Bahrām Bayzā’ī’s creative impulse and examine his oeuvre to offer an analytical overview of his aesthetic and thematic concerns and innovations. Before embarking on my chronological…

Before the narrative even begins, Rakhshān Banī-i‛timād’s Nargis (Nargess) of 1992 directly engages the theme of love. As the film opens accompanied by the melodic score, a close-up of a conventional bride and groom figurine…

Asghar Farhādī was born in 1972 in Humāyūnshahr, also known as Sidah (now called Khumaynīshahr), on the outskirts of Isfahan. He gravitated towards theater and film at an early age despite having no obvious family…

Introduction  Iranian cinema entered the European film festival scene in the 1960s. The first Iranian film to screen at Cannes was Mostafa Farzaneh’s…

This article is about an emergent form of cinema in whose production and propagation most of us have participated in one way or another.  I will concentrate on its manifestation in Iran around the political…

Director: Hūshang Kāvūsī Year of Release: 1956 Screenplay: Hūshang Kāvūsī Source Material: Phantom Lady, a novel by Cornell Woolrich (1942) Music: Vārtān Āzārīyān Cinematography: Mahdi Amīr Qāsim Cast: Nāsir Malik-Mutī‛ī, Muhsin Mahdavī, Sūzān, Mahīn Mu‛āvinzādah,…