Inside Iran: The Fight for Freedom

Recently, the State Department forced the Mamdani administration to cancel a planned meeting with Iran’s UN ambassador. Although the Mayor disavowed any prior knowledge, the City Journal reported the commissioner responsible was acting on a directive to reach out to national government’s “in political alignment/leftist.” A reasonable person might wonder why the mayor would consider himself to be “in alignment” with the oppressive Revolutionary Islamic regime. The dissident Iranians appearing in this film would also wonder. They were part of the “Women. Life. Freedom” movement that launched in protest of Mahsa Jina Amini, but morphed into a full-scale revolt against the mandatory Chador. At the time of its UK premiere in 2023, Gesbeen Mohammad’s Inside Iran: The Figjht for Freedom was one of the few documentaries independently chronicling the protests from within Iran. It remains required viewing when it premieres today on Tubi.

Mohammad starts with a damning examination of Amini’s death, while in the custody of the morals police, following a widely witnessed (but officially denied) beating of customary viciousness. Her murder hit home hard for Rozhina, who shared many mutual friends with Amini in their Kurdish Iranian town, Saqqez. Indeed, the “Women. Life. Freedom” protests essentially launched during Amini’s funeral.

Mindful of precedent, the regime often added insult to injury by blockading and harassing the services for the protesters they murdered, like Fatemeh’s brother Javad. Like Rozhina, she also eventually found sanctuary abroad. The censorship their fellow Iranians face is not merely politically and artistically stifling. Its net effect is the complete erasure of the fallen loved ones. That is why activists like Mina and Hafez (seen only in shadows or in disguise) remained in Iran to secretly record demonstrations and the oral testimony of victims.

Those stories are often shocking and devastating. Frankly, our “mayor” should hear Maryam explain how the so-called “morals” police sexually assaulted her with what she assumed was a baton. When eventually released, she made an emergency trip to her GYN specialist, who confided they were currently treating dozens of such injuries.

Reading Lolita in Tehran, Based on Azar Nafisi’s Memoir

In Nabokov’s novel, Lolita is systematically groomed and exploited by Humbert Humbert, whereas both film adaptations portray her more as a much older instigating coquette. Azar Nafisi and her English literature students identify with the Lolita of the novel. Of course, studying English literature (or any truly humanistic literature) is not easy during the days following the Islamic Revolution and it grows steadily more difficult as the regime entrenches itself in Eran Riklis’s Reading Lolita in Tehran, based on Azar Nafisi’s memoir, which opens tomorrow in theaters.

As liberals in exile, Nafisi and her husband Bijan understood returning to Iran after the Revolution entailed risks, but they believed they could help shape their country’s future. However, she soon realizes conditions are already worse than she imagined and steadily growing even more restrictive for women. Her husband seems to understand that on an intellectual level, but like many Iranian men, he underestimates or ignores the emotional toll of his wife’s loss of agency.

Her career as an English language professor also suffers. First, she must contend with disruptive Islamist students who employ tactics reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution’s Red Cadres. Soon, she is forced to wear the hajib. Eventually, the erosion of her academic freedoms makes it impossible to work at the university level in any meaningful way. However, she never stops teaching.

Instead, Nafisi secretly tutors small groups of students in her private flat. These sessions function sort of like early book clubs, but there is more to them than that. They are a means for the participants to maintain some sort of meaningful intellectual activity and carve out a supportive female only space in an increasingly misogynistic society.

Rather cleverly, Nafisi associates each section of her memoir with a key text and its corresponding principle female characters, drawing parallels between them and the events unfolding around her. The film starts with The Great Gatsby and the tension between love and money. Most of her students consider Daisy Buchanan merely a luxury commodity to possess (in a revealingly hypocritical way) and a symptom of decadent American capitalism, instead of the ideal of love Gatsby can never attain.

Similarly, Daisy Miller is a scandalous figure, because of her honesty and her defiance of polite society’s hypocrisy. The way Jane Austen captures rigid social structures and rituals mirrors the coded language and subtle deceptions that allow them to navigate the regime’s intrusive restrictions on their daily lives. Of course, Lolita directly speaks to the way the Islamic Republic infantilizes and sexualizes women.

The adaptation co-written by Riklis and Marjorie David is just as literate and elegiac as you would hope and expect. This is a mournful film that pays tribute to lost freedom, suppressed culture, and stolen lives. Yet, it is never polemic. Instead, it is deeply personal and meditative.

Cast Aside the Clouds: Being Baha’i in Iran

Dr. Sasan Naderi’s sister Mina participates in Woman Life Freedom demonstrations. That is risky, even for a devout Muslim.  His potential new girlfriend, Layla Khosravi, is Baha’i. For the Islamist establishment, represented by his Uncle Reza, that is unforgivable. Of course, Dr. Naderi never really thought about the oppression of Baha’is until he falls in love Khosravi in Mary Darling’s Cast Aside the Clouds, co-directed by Bre Vader and Felicia Sobhani, which is now playing in Los Angeles.

Khosravi is smart and cultured, despite the current (unchanged) regime’s best efforts. In Iran, Baha’is are prohibited from attending universities, thereby limiting their employment opportunities. She had been working in her father’s bookstore, until an anti-Baha’i thug throws a brick through the store window, striking Khosravi’s temple.

Of course, she receives conscientious care from Dr. Naderi, who just doesn’t get how or why something like this could happen. Later, he visits her store, despite his cluelessness regarding Baha’i discrimination and repression. He is obviously attracted to Khosravi—and the more he learns about her faith, the more he accepts and even admires it. Not surprisingly, his progressive sister adores Khosravi, but their fundamentalist uncle believes he knows better, so he uses his Basij connections to save “Naderi” from Khosravi.

Admittedly, most of Cast Aside the Clouds was filmed in English, to which shallow pedants might object (even though it quotes Persian verse at great length). However, they should understand Darling and co-screenwriter Clark Donnelly are Baha’i converts and all their significant cast-members share a common Persian heritage, despite their various nationalities. The simple reality is that a film like this cannot be produced or released in Iran, so it probably makes sense to assure its accessibility to the American (and international) market.

Indeed, the pseudo-Romeo & Juliet story is easy for viewers to identify with, regardless of their prior knowledge of religious persecution in Iran. Naderi’s courtship of Khosravi is entirely credible and their respective family dynamics are believable and highly relatable. Indeed, that makes Khosravi’s arrest and torture so disturbing. These are hard scenes to watch, but they are important, because they are rendered with authenticity and conviction. It is clear these sequences are directly informed by survivors’ testimony.

Hot Docs ’26: A War on Women

Here is an incovenient but telling truth for your consideration. When the Islamist Ruhollah Khomeini first launched his revolution against the Shah in 1963, he wasn’t motivated by corruption or the SAVAK secret police. He was outraged by the Shah’s decision to grant women the right to vote. Yet, Jimmy Carter believed Iran would better served with Khomeini as its ruler. Most Iranian women knew better. By now, most of the Iranian men agree. However, for decades, women were in the vanguard of the Iranian resistance movement. Iranian filmmaker Raha Shirazi and several leading Iranian women dissidents take stock of the rights they lost after the Islamic Revolution and their long continuing campaign to win them back in her documentary A War on Women, which screens again after its premiere at this year’s Hot Docs festival.

During the Shah’s reign, women’s rights were steadily improving. They could dress however they pleased and could pursue their education as far as their talents allowed. They could also sing and dance in public and show their hair, without fear of acid attacks. Mahnaz Afkhami knows this better than anyone, because she was Minister for Women’s Affairs in the 1978 government. As she explains, she was in New York forming a United Nation’s subsidiary devoted to women’s rights when the Shah fell. For her own safety, she never returned home.

Indeed, Shirazi assembled a small but powerful cast of expert witnesses, who testify first-hand regarding the systematic oppression of women by the current Iranian regime. Several have paid dearly for their free-thinking, such as Elahe Tavakolian, who was blinded in one eye when the Iranian “Morality Police” shot her during a “Woman, Life, Freedom” protest.

Likewise, Shaparak Shajarizadeh became an international online cause celeb after she was arrested for removing her headscarf. Journalist Masih Alinejad and actress Golshifteh Farhani (formerly considered the rough equivalent of Iran’s “sweetheart”) movingly discuss the pain of exile and the deep, gnawing fear for loved ones left behind.

After watching the women’s harrowing and heartbreaking testimony elicited by Shirazi, any morally tone-deaf ideologue who protested on behalf of the Iranian regime should feel profound shame and stomach-churning embarrassment. Regardless, of your opinions of Trump’s management of the military conflict, it is clear the Iranian people would be much better off without their current oppressors.

Doc Fortnight ’26: The Vanishing Point

It didn't start in 2026. It didn’t start with the women life freedom movement. It didn’t even start with the Green protests of 2009. It certainly wasn’t anything Trump created. For decades, Iranians have resisted their oppressive Islamist regime. A painful case in point would be filmmaker Bani Khoshnoudi’s dissident cousin, who was arrested and eventually executed, leaving behind only a small bag of effects. For years, her family grieved her in silence. However, like so many bereaved parents, Khoshnoudi finally speaks out, paying tribute to her cousin and condemning the regime’s human rights abuses in The Vanishing Point, which screens again today as part of the 2026 Documentary Fortnight at MoMA.

In 1988, Khoshnoudi and her husband tried to covertly return to Iran, but she was betrayed by her in-laws. The rest of her life was spent in Evin prison, with no contact with the outside world. When her family retrieved her possessions, they were warned to stay quiet, which they did.

Khoshnoudi, who immigrated to the U.S. with her parents after the 1979 revolution, was banned from returning to Iran in 2009, after directing a film addressing the Green protests. She was probably safer that way, judging from her mother’s anecdote, explaining how she once outsmarted Basij morality police, a story that is both absurdly funny and chillingly frightening.

This film does not focus on Khoshnoudi’s cousin, but she is the inspiration and the catalyst. The grief her family had to hide also helps her relate to the anguished mothers seen in the protest footage she incorporates throughout the film.

Frankly, The Vanishing Point is a little of this and a little of that. There is visceral video of the Iranian police and Basij militia beating and even shooting protesters at point blank range. There are also family interviews and even meditative interludes filmed in the abandoned homes left behind by dissenting Iranians made to disappear.

Slamdance ’26: It Means Hope (short)

They are filming the sort of dishonest regime propaganda too many Western extremists chose to amplify out of perversely misplaced prejudices (against Israel, the West, Jews, Trump, take your pick). Hanie Taheri can tell poor Sonia is lying under duress, because as the assigned makeup artist, her job largely entails covering-up the woman’s black eye in Shadi Karamroudi’s short film, It Means Hope, which screens during the 2026 Slamdance Film Festival.

Taheri had no idea of the true nature of today’s gig until she got there. Whenever she sees the battered Sonia, she feels overwhelming shame, but it isn’t like she has any choice. It isn’t just a question of her safety. There is also her young son and her unborn daughter to worry about. As she explains to Sonia, while fixing her makeup, she intends to call her Hiva, because it means hope.

One way or another, the “director” will force Sonia to disavow reports of her sister’s murder while in police custody. Instead, she must blame her death on an overdose of anti-depressants, which she had supposedly been taking for some time. However, the words literally stick in Sonia’s throat. The unseemly business is also profoundly disgusting Taheri.

Karamroudi’s film is tragically timely and horrifyingly grounded in reality. Indeed, it echoes many reports of the Iranian regime’s atrocities and the crude propaganda they produced to deny their crimes against their own citizens. This is a work of fiction, but it is based on truth. Indeed, the screenplay, co-written by Karamroudi and Arian Vazirdaftari is unusually well-crafted, saying much, quite eloquently, even though the dialogue is rather economical.

Celluloid Underground, OVID.tv

After the revolution, Iranian women couldn’t leave the house with their heads uncovered. Freedom of religion disappeared. Even dog owners had to keep their beloved pets secretly hidden. Yet, too many pseudo-intellectuals maintain a see-no-evil policy towards Iran. Okay, try this one on for size hipsters. The Revolutionary government made film ownership illegal. The prohibition even included home movies. Ehsan Khoshbakht knew it only too well. He managed an underground student screening society and befriended the owner of the largest private film collections in Iran at the time. Khoshbakht explains why he and Ahmad Jorghahnian risked arrest and possibly far worse for the sake of film in his autobiographical documentary Celluloid Underground, which premieres today on OVID.tv.

Frankly, Khoshbakht never really thought of himself as a rebel, until an audience member at a screening accused him of anti-social behavior. It was a chilling moment, inspiring greater caution going forward. Yet, he couldn’t help wondering about of Jorghahnian’s rumored archive. By the time they met, the collector was even warier, but eventually he started loaning prints for Khoshbakht’s screenings.

Cutting Through Rocks: An Iranian Woman Runs for Office

Iran has neither the equivalent of Emily’s List or the Susan B. Anthony List. Women candidates are not merely rare. They are unheard of. That meant Sara Shahverdi’s election to her local council was a really big deal. However, if you think that was the end of the story, then you must be dangerously naïve. Sara Khaki & Mohammadreza Eyni document Shahverdi’s campaign and the campaign after the campaign in Cutting Through Rocks, which opens this Friday in New York.

Shahverdi is tough, because her beloved father deliberately raised her to be a tomboy. Nevertheless, she obediently married—and then rebelliously divorced. That was a scandal, but she still earned much of her village’s trust as a notary, who regularly helped her customers navigate red tape. Thanks to her clients, many of whom were women voting for the first time, Shaverdi was elected, along with her younger brother.

She was true to her promises, spearheading a major project connecting the village houses to the natural gas grid. However, to qualify for the program, home-owners needed to present a legal title. Most households lacked such paperwork. Shahverdi could help in this respect, but only if the men granted their wives partial ownership.

This ignited a war of a ferocity that caught Shahverdi by surprise. To make matters worse, her own brother did not necessarily have her back. Shockingly, Shahverdi finds herself defending her identity as a woman, facing an involuntary re-assignment, pending review by state doctors.

Cutting Through Rocks is the kind of film that completely undermines a lot of “progressive” illusions regarding the Islamist world. If believe you can declare your own gender, don’t travel to Iran, because the regime considers that their job. Likewise, Shaverdi’s struggle to advance women’s rights takes one step forward and then one step backward. She successfully arranges ownership stakes for many vulnerable older women, but her efforts to discourage arranged child marriages literally ends in tears.

Panahi’s It was Just an Accident

Their relationship was so “intimate,” Vahid could recognize him by his smell and the sound of his walking gait. He was a prison torturer and Vahid was one of his many victims. Frankly, he never saw his tormentor’s face, but when they suddenly cross paths, all Vahid’s traumatic memories come rushing back to him. However, he wants 100% confirmation before taking the final step towards vengeance in Jafar Panahi’s Cannes Palme d’Or-winning It was Just an Accident, which opens today in New York.

Driving home with his pregnant wife and young daughter, Eghbal accidentally hits a stray dog (dogs have it rough in Islamist Iran). Shortly thereafter, their car starts sputtering, but Eghbal manages to coast to Vahid’s garage, where his co-worker gives the engine a temporary patch-up job. However, Vahid remains in the shadows, because hearing the man’s voice and squeaky prosthetic leg makes his blood run cold.

Overcome with rage, Vahid follows Eghbal home and continues stalking him. Soon, he strikes, abducting his former torturer—at least Vahid is ninetysome percent sure Eghbal is the man who terrorized him night after night. He is ready to bury the regime loyalist in the desert, but he wants to be completely certain, so he visits Shiva, a photographer friend of a mutual dissident friend, who also suffered at the hands of the interrogator with the artificial limb. She remembers the feel of the leg, because he often made her touch it (yuck, in the most believably disturbing way), but she never saw his face either.

When Shiva’s client, Goli learns why Shiva is so distracted by the contents of Vahid’s van, she insists on seeing Eghbal for herself, because she was also a victim. Yet, again, she cannot ID him with absolute certainty. Without changing from her wedding gown, she and her groom, Ali, join Vahid and Shiva, in search of Hamid, a further member of their imprisoned circle. However, Hamid’s ordeal left him with anger management issues bordering on mild psychosis. He will not be a stabilizing addition to their party.

Without question, this is one of the best films of Panahi’s accomplished career. In some ways, it brings to mind Death and the Maiden, but it is much more than that. This is a deeply humanistic film with a surprisingly absurdist streak. Vahid’s ever-growing carpool would almost bring to mind It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, if the subject of their quest was not so grimly serious. Indeed, this film is shocking one moment, funny the next, and then deeply unsettling. Yet, there is never any feeling of whiplash. Under Panahi’s sure hand, viewers understand this is what it is like to live in contemporary Iran.

The tremendous range and flexibility of the cast is a major reason why the constantly shifting gears come across so smoothly for the audience. They obviously appreciate the dire stakes and the simultaneously bizarre absurdism of their characters’ situation. Accident ought to win awards for best cast, but it won’t, because that would take guts.

Tehran Blues, on OVID.tv

Anyone singing in Iran, necessarily sings the blues. Music is strictly forbidden for women and highly discouraged for men. For obvious reasons, busking is a tough business for a poet and musician like Erfan Shafei, but he and his street musician friends carry on as best they can in Spanish filmmaker Javier Tolentino’s documentary, Tehran Blues, which premieres this Thursday on OVID.tv.

Shafei’s get-together with other regional Iranian folk musicians feels more like a support group meeting than a workshop or a jam session. That does not suggest a great cultural state of affairs. Nevertheless, many of them discuss and perform music with tremendous passion, especially Golmehr Alami, whose vocal feature spot is absolutely hypnotic.

You might consider Shafei’s friends and colleagues the Persian or Iranian equivalent of Roots or Americana music. Many of them explore the neglected folk music traditions of their home regions. Often, you can blues-like undertones to their music. In fact, some of the instrumental solos even have a jazz vibe reminiscent of the Eastern-influenced drone-like recordings of artists like Coltrane and Lateef.

Toletino also follows Shafei on an unstructured, slackery tour Iran, in search of authentic regional music. It provides a fascinating reality check, revealing the genuine attitudes and opinions of working-class Iranians. A rugged fisherman completely upends expectations, expressing his intention to defy his country’s misogynistic two-parts-for-men and one-part-for-women inheritance tradition, because all his sons are idiots, while all his daughters have their act together. Indeed, he sounds quite progressive, albeit somewhat cautiously so.

Where God is not, on OVID.tv

They were exiled from Iran, but part of them will probably always remain in the notorious Evin and Ghezel Hesar prisons. Indeed, Mazyar Ebrahimi lives with the chronic pain constantly reminding him of the torture he endured there. Ebrahimi and two fellow survivors recreate the Iranian political prisoner experience for filmmaker Mehran Tamadon in Where God is not, which is now streaming on OVID.tv.

Ebrahimi had a video supply company, who was unjustly denounced, mostly likely by a business rival. When the torturers finished with him, he had confessed to the assassinations of several nuclear scientists. Absurdly, most of the details were wrong, because his “interrogators” force-fed him inaccurate information. For Tamadon’s benefit, Ebrahimi recreates his Stalinist-style televised confessions. He also transforms a bed in the abandoned Parisian factory serving as Tamadon’s makeshift studio, into a replica of the torture gurney his tormentors worked him over on. Yet, the re-enactment is too painful for Ebrahimi, even though Tamadon takes his place as the victim. Finding himself in his torturer’s position literally makes Ebrahimi sick to his stomach.

Although Ebrahimi is probably the least known internationally of Tamadon’s participants, his testimony is by far the most powerful. However, the filming process might have been the most difficult Homa Kahlor. Her memoir exposed the systemic abuse and grossly overcrowded conditions in Ghezel Hesar, but she clearly blames herself for helplessly standing-by, as she witnesses horrible acts of cruelty, while she served as an inmate-trustee.

Arguably, Iranian journalist Taghi Rahmani is the most famous veteran of Iranian prisons and Tamadon’s interview subject running the greatest risks, since his wife, 2023 Nobel Peace Prize recipient Narges Mohammadi, still remains behind bars. Dubbed “Iran’s mostly frequently jailed journalist” by Reporters Without Borders, he might also hold the record for incarceration within the film, with well over twelve years. Nevertheless, Rahmani yearns to return, because Iran is his home.

Oakville ’24: One Must Wash Eyes

The CCP is not the only oppressive regime engaging in the extraterritorial harassment of their critics. Iranian agents have already been indictment for the attempted kidnapping of democracy advocate Masih Alinejad—on American soil. She is a prominent activist, but the brutal Islamist regime has also targeted average people too. Consequently, Sahar has good reasons to worry about herself and her family when she is photographed at a Canadian demonstration in support of the Woman, Life, Freedom movement in director-screenwriter Sepideh Yadegar’s One Must Wash Eyes, which premieres tonight at the 2024 Oakville Film Festival.

To remain in Canada on her student visa Sahar must pay her overdue tuition. Unfortunately, her mother has been unable to transfer the money, because her Uncle Hekmat has yet to buy out her late father’s share of their business. Her mother is trusting, but Sahar is justifiably suspicious. Things go from bad to worse when she is clearly and identifiably photographed at a Woman, Life, Freedom demonstration.

Immediately, her boss at the Persian grocery store fires her, fearing his association with her will jeopardize his frequent visits home. (Frankly, his shocking lack of sympathy for the democracy cries out for fuller exploration.) Shortly thereafter, Sahar gets a call from her mother, informing her the family received a threatening visit from the Basiji morals police.

Even though rational people would consider Sahar the smallest of small fries, viewers need to understand there nothing far-fetched in Yadegar’s screenplay. In fact, the authoritarian regime comes after everyday people like her all the time. If anything, Yadegar shows tremendous restraint in her depiction of their extraterritorial repression.

Despite the necessarily heavy political themes, One Must Wash Eyes (an awkward title, almost guaranteed to change that refers to Persian poet Sohrab Sepehri’s verse) is still more of a character study, examining the impact of extreme stress and alienation on the increasingly desperate Sahar.

Pegah Ghafoori (from From) is terrific as Sahar. She is an almost painfully realistic character, who makes a lot of mistakes, but they are all only too believable. Throughout it all, Ghafoori keeps her performance honest and grounded. Remember when you finished your degree? Now try to imagine going through that time while fearing for your safety and that of your family, but not trusting anyone enough to ask for help.

Animation First ’24: The Siren

By 1980, many (if not most) Iranians realized the Islamic Revolution was a national catastrophe. Unfortunately, the Iran-Iraq War had the unintended consequence of strengthening the Ayatollah’s hand, because when Iraq attacked, patriotic Iranians like Omid’s brother rallied to their country’s defense. The young (barely) teenager wants to serve, but instead he stays to care for his elderly grandfather in Sepideh Farsi’s The Siren, which screens as the closing night selection of this year’s Animation First.

Omid’s brother Amed has volunteered to defend their strategic (and oil-rich) port city of Abadan, like most young men his age. Their mother whisks their younger siblings off to safer territory, reluctantly leaving Omid in charge of crotchety grandpa. Omid hoped to join Amed on the frontlines, but he changes his tune when blunders into a full-scale fire-fight.

Unfortunately, the front constantly finds Abadan thanks to Saddam’s rocket attacks. Replacing Farshid, a surrogate big brother injured by shell fragments, on his food delivery route, Omed meets a colorful cross-section of Abadan’s remaining residents. There is an eccentric engineer, two Armenian priests safeguarding their church’s icon, and Elaheh, a former star vocalist, who has been living in quiet seclusion since the Revolutionary regime banned music.

Omid is even more interested in Elaheh’s pretty young daughter, Pari, who is also incredibly brave. Pari helped save Farshid’s life after the shelling, by using her headscarf as a torniquet—in what might be one of the most important scenes in you will see in an animated film this year. Learning the Iraqis are expected to soon overrun Abadan, Omid hatches an evacuation plan inspired by his father, a sea captain who went down with his wooden lenj.

The Siren is part magical realism and partly a brutally honest and unvarnished record of life under the Islamist regime’s Khomeini years. Screenwriter Javad Djavahery’s narrative is loaded with historical and social significance, but it also tells a highly relatable coming of age story. Of course, Omid faces vastly more peril than the kid on Boyhood.

A Revolution on Canvas: Nodjoumi’s Stolen Report on the Revolution

When Nikzad (Nicky) Nodjoumi had exhibitions at MoMA and the British Museum, any pieces he loaned them were scrupulously returned. That was not the case with his “blockbuster” solo show, “Report on the Revolution” held at the Tehran Museum of Modern Art in 1980. Over forty years later, Nodjoumi is still trying to recover the work that inspired riots and forced him into exile. From the safety of Brooklyn, Nodjoumi reaches out to Iranian contacts who might be able to help, while taking stock of his life, work, and family relationships in A Revolution on Canvas, an HBO-produced documentary co-directed by his daughter Sara Nodjoumi and her husband Till Schauder, which opens Friday in New York.

While studying in New York, Nodjoumi was an ardent member of the militant Iranian Student Association, protesting the Shah, the Vietnam War, Israel, and the West in general. His wife, artist Nahid Hagigat, was not so sure, but she went along with him for his sake. When he returned to Iran, Nodjoumi immediately joined the street demonstrations, but as soon as Khomeini and his clerics assumed control, he realized life in Iran was about to get far worse. He even joined demonstrations critical of the new regime, which he barely survived.

As a result, Nodjoumi was not actively promoting his latest work. Nevertheless, Masud Shafie Monfared, the museum director, approached Nodjoumi, suggesting a retrospective of his revolutionary era work. When it opened, gangs of thugs loyal to the new regime rioted in the museum. The next day, the state-controlled newspaper attacked one painting in particular with such incendiary terms, Monfared removed it for safe keeping—or so he told Nodjoumi at the time. Soon thereafter, Nodjoumi fled Iran in one of the last flights that left Tehran before Iraq bombed the airport. None of Nodjoumi’s work on display in the museum has been seen publicly since then.

Strangely, Monfared, who now splits between the Sacramento and Iran, could not remember any of these events when he sat for an interview with the Nodjoumis. Strange, right? You would think he would remember a riot in his museum and handling an ideologically radioactive painting that the new regime had so vociferously condemned. It certainly looks like he is covering for the crimes of the Iranian regime, while enjoying America’s hospitality.

Frontline: Inside the Iranian Uprising

How many times must the citizens of Iran take to the streets to protest their oppressive clerical regime, before the governments of the liberal West finally do something tangible to support them? Sadly, we are still asking. Who in the Biden administration could object to the most recent Iranian protest slogan: “women, life, freedom?” It is indeed Iranian women who were at the forefront of the latest round of protests and it has been Iranian women who have been dying as a result. Drawing on a wealth of protest footage posted (at least temporarily) to social media and authenticated by third parties, Nightline documents the demonstrations and the regime’s brutal response in director Majed Neisi’s “Inside the Iranian Uprising,” which premieres on digital this Thursday.

It all started with the murder Mahsa (Jina) Amini, a Kurdish Iranian woman, who died in a Tehran hospital, after having been arrested by the Iranian Morality Police. Her story went viral throughout Iran and around the world, after reporters (one of whom, Niloofar Hamedi, has since been arrested) published photos of Amini in a coma and her parents grieving in the hospital.

Many women were so outraged, they took to the streets, burning their hijabs in public protests, even though that very definitely made them targets for the same savagery that killed Amini. One of those was Nika Shakarami, a 16-year-old YouTube influencer, who mysteriously disappeared after burning her hijab in a protest, until the government finally produced her body nine days later, claiming she was the victim of a highly convenient suicide.

Yet, some of the most horrific accounts of torture in this Frontline report come from men, like the medical student who bravely offers an on-camera description of how he was sodomized with a police baton. Neisi and the Frontline producers mask the identity of another torture victim, using a British voice actor to overdub his shocking account of how the so-called Morality Police raped him and another man while they were in custody.

The Cat (short)

Iran is shaped like a cat (vaguely, see here) and Persian cats are enormously popular pets there, yet they must be hidden away from the religious police who would confiscate them. It is therefore safe to say Iranians have a complex relationship with felines, but the makes the title of Los Angeles-based Persian thesp Mary Apick’s first animated short so apt. In thirteen minutes, Iran’s entire post-revolutionary history unfolds in a very symbolic and allegorical fashion in Apick’s The Cat, which releases tomorrow on YouTube.

Despite the Revolutionary government’s emphasis on morals, young street children in Tehran still face great hardships, like the little flower girl of Apick’s film. There is also prostitution and the exploitation that often comes with it, which is represented by the naked women boxed up in the Metropolis-like factory, or so we would assume.

Indeed, there is a lot of interpretive room in The Cat, but the dark corrupting wave that leaves only sludge and rubble in its wake pretty clearly seems to represent the oppressiveness of the current theocratic regime. Also, the graveyard of battered musical instruments certainly reflects their extreme Islamist attitudes towards music in particular and culture in general.

DOC NYC ’21: Be My Voice

The downside of social media is all too obvious (polarization, trolling, cat memes), but there are positives worth noting. You can get news directly from human rights activists around the world, uncensored and unfiltered, at least until they are arrested, like Joshua Wong was in Hong Kong. You can still join Masih Alinejad’s hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers (in fact, I recommend it). Alinejad’s social media savvy has made her a particularly annoying thorn in the side of the Iranian regime, but her prominence has cost her dearly. Nahid Persson captures Alinejad’s highs and lows as she continues her campaign against the fundamentalist regime in Be My Voice, which screens as part of this year’s DOC NYC.

It is immediately clear why the regime is so threatened by Alinejad. She has boundless energy and superstar charisma. She regularly delivers news from the Iranian streets to her army of followers on various social media networks and her VOA Persian broadcasts. As a result, most of her family back in Iran was forced to renounce her. The brave exception was her brother Ali, who served as her link to their parents and other siblings. Of course, identifying pressure points is one of the things oppressive governments do best. Consequently, they target him during the course of Persson’s scheduled filming with Alinejad.

Clearly, Alinejad’s overflowing sincerity is both her greatest strength and weakness. We can see only too well how deeply she feels everything. Sometimes her temper might be her second biggest enemy, but her passionate commitment is real and her enthusiasm is admirable. It is those qualities that built her extensive following in Iran, including a number of women (of all ages), who have publicly challenged mandatory chador laws, sending her videos of their defiance. If you are less than thrilled with face-masks, just imagine how much fun headscarves (or burqas in particularly restrictive Islamist nations) must be.

Born in Evin: Starting Life as a Political Prisoner

Maryam Zaree survived a nightmare of early childhood development and still turned out okay. It helped to have two loving parents—once they were released from Iran’s notoriously harsh Evin Prison. That is where Zaree spent the first two years of her life as an infant political prisoner, but she remembers nothing of the experience. Bothered by her gap in memory, Zaree tries to get her mother to finally discuss those nightmarish days in her deeply personal documentary, Born in Evin, which releases today on VOD.

Like many progressive Iranians, Zaree’s parents initially supported to revolution against the Shah, only to find themselves prisoners of conscience under the new, even less tolerant Islamist regime. Unlike many of their cell-mates, her mother Nargess and father Kasra were eventually released after years of brutal imprisonment, much to their own surprise. First, Zaree was turned over to her grandparents and then her mother was released. They immigrated to Frankfurt, where her father eventually joined them.

Her parents are no longer together, which sadly often happens when couples endure years of forced separation. Regardless, her father definitely remained part of her life. Yet, despite his greater openness to questions, he could tell her little, because he was held captive in the men’s wing of the prison.

At times, Born is almost too personal. We see a lot of Zaree’s agonizing over her mother’s reluctance to participate. However, as she widens her focus to include any other survivors who like her, either were born or spent formative years in the notorious prison, she makes valid points about memory and testimony. Indeed, the current regime would much prefer it if the survivors of Evin’s torture chambers refused to discuss the horrors they endured.

Rendez-Vous ’18: Before Summer Ends

Ah, home sweet oppressive regime. Iranian expatriates like these three grad students have a complicated relationship with their homeland. As one puts it, he feels more at home in Iran, but he is more like the person he wants to be in France. When one of the trio decides to return home, his two mates convince him to take one last (or rather first) road trip together in Maryam Goormaghtigh’s Before Summer Ends (trailer here), which screens during the 2018 Rendez-Vous with French Cinema.

Arash is a big fellow, who was apparently spoiled by his family in Iran. Perhaps not surprisingly, Ashkan and Hossein adapted better to life in Paris, especially the latter, who married a French woman. When Arash announces his plan to return, his friends try to talk him out of it, yet they obviously understand his decision. Nevertheless, they will have one last hurrah of easily accessible beer and wine, while camping out and carousing along the French Riviera.

Reportedly, Goormaghtigh originally intended to make a documentary about the refugee experience (because there are hardly any of those already), but the three expat friends just captured her filmmaking enthusiasm. Indeed, it is quietly compelling to watch them navigate their in-between expatriate existences: not citizens, not asylum-seekers, not illegal aliens, nor stateless fugitives.

Although filmed direct-documentary-style, Before often has the feel of a chatty Richard Linklater indie-road-comedy, especially when two French indie-rockers start tagging along. However, serious issues are always percolating right below the surface. In fact, we eventually learn Arash is not the only one who will have to make hard-and-fast residency decision.

The trio, simply credited as Arash, Ashkan, and Hossein (which is telling in itself), crack their share of scatological jokes, but they also have some shrewd insights to offer. Perhaps the resemblance between the geography of the south of France and the north of Iran put them in a conducive head-space. In any event, we certainly feel like we know them when the film finally runs its course.

Before Summer Ends is a small film, but it has some wry nuggets of wisdom to offer. Considering how much they enjoy their potent potables, it is hard to imagine the three amigos could re-acclimate to life in contemporary Medieval Iran, but they themselves suggest they are very different people in their native country. Recommended for those in the mood for a lowkey film that still has substance, Before Summer Ends screens tomorrow afternoon (3/17), as part of French Rendez-Vous ’18, at the Walter Reade.

Tehran Taboo: Sex and the Single Revolutionary Islamic Girl

It is like an underground Sex and the City, but consenting adults run the risk of arrest and torture at the hands of the morality police. Tehran is just as cosmopolitan and randy as any major city, but Islamist hypocrisy and misogyny has a poisonous effect on human relationships. Three middle class urban women try to negotiate the sexually charged terrain of the capital city in Ali Soozandeh’s bold animated feature, Tehran Taboo (trailer here), which opens at Film Forum on Valentine’s Day.

Pari must work as a prostitute to survive, because her incarcerated husband refuses to consent to a divorce or sign her employment applications. Ironically, Pari and scores of her colleagues walk the streets fairly openly, because the morality police prefers to crack down on couples holding hands. The Islamic Court judge will not grant her a divorce without the acquiescence of her deadbeat husband, but he offers to make her his kept woman instead.

As part of the deal, Pari and her young mute son Elias move into an upscale flat owned by the upstanding jurist. Though Pari is cagey about her own circumstances, she quickly befriends Sara, the pregnant wife of Mohsen, an entitled banker. She yearns to pursue a career of her own, but he categorically forbids it, using the pregnancy and her previous miscarriages as an excuse.

Meanwhile, electronica DJ Babak finds himself living the longest, most awkward morning after, when his hook-up from the previous night insists he fund her hymen reconstruction surgery. It seems Donya has a very large, possibly mobbed-up fiancé, who is expecting to marry a virgin.

Eventually, Pari will take a big sisterly interest in both Donya and Babak, but unfortunately, she can mostly offer moral support, rather than the financial kind. Nevertheless, Soozandeh brings his cast together in a convincingly organic manner, rather than contriving ways for their paths to cross. At various times, each woman is both a victim and a schemer, but the deck is always stacked against them.

The Iranian-born, Germany-based Soozandeh, who helped animate segments of the remarkable documentary The Green Wave, is shockingly frank, at least by Iranian standards. To put it in perspective, the film starts with Pari trying to perform a sex act often denoted by two letters on a flaccid cabbie, with the silently jaded Elias sitting in the back seat. Yet, through the use a child’s still somewhat innocent perspective, Soozandeh consciously embraces the tradition of classic Persian cinema.

Nevertheless, there is no denying the predatory and base nature of the men exploiting Pari, Sara, and Donya. By forcing sexual relations underground and under the table, they become effectively severed from the strictures of respectable society. In effect, only the law of the jungle applies.

Yet, nobody is entirely a victim (especially not Pari), because Soozandeh has drawn such distinctive and multi-dimensional characters. There are not merely symbols, they are women with stories to tell (or rather try to keep secret). You would think the animation would provide a protective layer between the film’s provocative subject matter and the contributing cast, but Soozandeh’s use of rotoscoping techniques means there are indeed bravely identifiable performances to be seen throughout Taboo. Even through the transformative animation, Elmira Rafizadeh’s work as Pari is remarkably earthy and gutsy, while Zahra Amir Ebrahimi is quietly devastating as Sara. Yet, it is the silent indicting gaze of Bilal Yasar’s Elias that will truly haunt viewers.

Soozandeh largely focuses on sexual/gender iniquities, but he does not ignore other forms of institutionalized injustice, such as the pointless censorship of Babak’s music and the shocking sight of bodies swaying from the gallows at a public execution. Soozandeh holds a rotoscoped mirror up to contemporary Iran and forces viewers to give it a long, hard look. The result is a viscerally powerful experience that both seduces and horrifies. It is an outstanding film, definitely in the tradition of Persepolis and The Breadwinner, but clearly intended for mature audiences. Very highly recommended, Tehran Taboo opens this Wednesday (2/14) in New York, at Film Forum. Happy Valentine’s Day.