In 1994, three years before Kiarostami’s Palme d’Or-winning Taste of Cherry (1997), The Abadanis (Abadaniha), a cross-cultural adaptation of Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves (1948) directed by Kianush Ayari, almost made it to the list of Cannes festival’s nominees. However, the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance in Iran prohibited the film’s submission to  the festival because of its anti-war point of view and its alleged dark social realism. Three decades after its production, the multifaceted thematic and cinematic aspects of the film and its socio-political impact continue to shine out and call for critical reengagement. This essay approaches Ayari’s The Abadanis (1993) as a marginalized, boycotted, and underrated adaptation of Vittorio de Sica’s Bicycle Thieves and discusses the ways the film interconnects with De Sica’s film, Bartolini’s novel, and socio-political peculiarities of post-war Iran. Drawing on the author’s personal interviews with the director, the essay explores the means of authorship in the border-crossing adaptation and argues that the film has re-historicized neorealism by registering a visual testimony to postwar Tehran; a historical testimony memorialized in cinema but itself historically silenced. The essay maintains that it is time for The Abadanis to be revisited and to speak out.