What the F is Going On!?! Part Three: Iranian Film

When the US bombed Iranian nuclear sites this summer, I made a list of Iranian films to watch and write about. While the strikes between Israel and Iran have cooled off and US involvement seems to have just been a back and forth of tit for tat lobbing missiles, this seems to have been a continuation of the US assassination of Iranian military leaders during the first Trump administration, the Iranian response to bomb a US base that resulted in numerous traumatic brain injuries of servicemen. There were also claims that Iran had made attempts or plans to assassinate Trump during his time out of office, although everything that comes from Trump’s orbit should come with the world’s largest grain of salt. It seems that there has been intent for a long time on the right to see Iran as the most extreme, most anti-American country in the World, and to paint the entire, rather large population into the “Death to America” masses. John McCain chuckled as he sang about bombing Iran to a Beach Boys tune, and that refrain hasn’t really quieted even as the regime has made subtle attempts to make nuclear deals and the intensity from the days of Amadinejad in the early 2000’s. While the regime hasn’t really brought new freedoms, the people of Iran have made their voices clear through protests led by women and from a class of incredibly rebellious and talented filmmakers to come out of Iran… and in some cases, not allowed to leave Iran. I thought a watchlist of Iranian films and films about historic events would give a human face to those in Iran who have lived through a lot of conflict and natural disasters, have to adhere to some strict social norms, but have created incredible art despite their government. 

The most recent western movie to show Iranian history, the Oscar winning Argo, isn’t exactly a great look at the population of Iran in general, but it does show how little understanding there has been about the country even in the intelligence community. This shows the fall of the US Embassy in Tehran, very realistically depicted and we do get some wide shots of Tehran that are stunning, although they are entirely recreated. One of the most interesting aspects of this are the meetings at the CIA where there are options given to get the Embassy workers out of the country and some of the options, like riding bikes through the countryside and to the border, are unrealistic because the understanding of the region was just a generalization of heat and desert, not cold, rocky mountains. 

Perhaps the film that gives the best historical overview of Iran, the Shah, the Revolution and the the Iran/Iraq war is Persepolis. This was one of the first introductions I had with modern Iranian culture, having read the graphic novel on a recommendation almost 20 years ago. Around the same time, I recall a great article in ESPN Magazine or Sports Illustrated about basketball players from the west (although not the US) living and playing in the professional basketball league in Iran. That article was fascinating in that it painted a picture of a society where these foreigners could live fairly normal lives, alcohol would be available but in secret, they could enjoy the culture and hospitable people and enjoy playing in the league as well. Similarly, one of the aspects of Persepolis that has stuck with me through all these years was that the girl lived on western music, collecting bootleg Michael Jackson tapes sold on the street, from tables with rows and rows of tapes. It was something that was banned, but pretty broadly ignored as long as it wasn’t openly defied. There would still be odd day to day rules based on living in a theocracy like headscarves on women and girls, and limits to social situations between genders and it is in these ways that the logic of storytelling in Iranian films can be unique, but the sentiments of drama and humanity remain universal.

If there is one filmmaker in Iran that especially lives over the line of defiance in Iran, it is Jafar Panahi. Some of his earlier films, The White Balloon and The Mirror, follow experiences of children living in Iran, a theme of his mentor and collaborator Abbas Kiarostami. More on him later. However, in the 2000’s the themes of his films would be more mature, and more defiant. Offside depicts the true story of women attempting to get into the stadium to watch a World Cup Qualifier match, the women are kept in a holding area just out of view of the game where they bond over their love of the game, their national team and anxiously trying to get a glimpse of the game. Some of the women find ways to escape and watch the game while members of the security force chase them around. It is a defiant statement on gender in Iran, while also highlighting nationalistic pride by this subjugated class. 

It is Panahi’s next “film” that highlights his defiance and his status as perhaps the bravest filmmaker in the world. This is Not a Film, titled as a statement as he was banned from making films by the government and not allowed to leave the country. He had been sentenced to six years in prison in 2010 for attempting to make a documentary about the disputed 2009 re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. After International backlash by fellow filmmakers and Barack Obama, his sentence was allowed to serve his time under house arrest. During this time he made “This is Not a Film,” but because he was the lead actor, the making of this movie fell under a semantic protest of his ban because he was not technically a “filmmaker.” This depicts him dealing with his legal situation in a film that is focused just on one man’s problems in a single apartment with no one else on screen. It ends with him taking out the trash to the street where we see there is broader unrest, protests and fires in the outside world. It’s an utterly captivating film, however the story that it was smuggled out of Iran inside a cake so that it could be submitted to the Berlin Film Festival is just as harrowing. 

He would continue to make movies, Taxi is a dramatized film shot entirely in a taxi cab driving through Tehran as he picks up various characters as himself, learning about all of them, even finding fans of his films looking to connect through bootleg videos. 3 Faces has he and an actress he knows well traveling to a rural region after a call for help from a younger woman in a bit of a mystery movie. His most recent film before this year, No Bears, has him in rural Iran yet again in a fictionalized version of reality where he is there to make a documentary about a couple trying to emigrate. This is an interesting movie because it shows how he is able to film without the equipment he would have had at his disposal if it were a traditionally made film, using what appears to be a traditional still camera with digital video recording. This allows for the story to let him put the camera on a lanyard around the neck of a local man, hit record and let him film as he walks around, truly a fly on the wall of events, and allowing a bit of a “Blow Up” or “Blow Out” situation of discovering mysteries after the fact. After this film was made Panahi was imprisoned again, thankfully his release was gained through negotiations from the Biden Administration. His newest release this year, It was Just an Accident, won the Palm d’Or at Cannes this year and I greatly anticipate its North American release before the end of the year.

Panahi’s cinematic career is directly related to one of the other most well known Iranian filmmakers, Abbas Kiarostami, who wrote Panahi’s first feature, The White Balloon. These two are hardly the only notable filmmakers out of Iran, Asghar Farhai is one of the few directors in the World to win the Oscar for Best International Film twice with A Separation and The Salesman and Samira Makhmalbaf, a woman filmmaker who won her first Cannes Jury Prize for Blackboards (an amazing movie about the Iran/Iraq war) at just 21 years old. 

Kiarostami started making films for the bureaucratic education department in Iran, making films about the difficulties of children having to do so much homework that their parents end up doing most of it. Among his first mainstream movie, Where is the Friend’s House, is similar in theme to those educational films, about a boy attempting to find a classmate who had forgotten his notebook for homework. He doesn’t know the boy very well, doesn’t know where he lives, but sneaks out at night, barely sleeping on an Odyssey through his town at night. This is the first in an unintentional trilogy of films, The Koker Trilogy. In Life, and Nothing More… a fictionalized version of Kiarostami returns to the area after an Earthquake searching for the actors of the real life Where is the Friend’s House movie. The town has been devastated by the earthquake, and many of the roads are impassable. While their search is fruitless, they do find the people of the region still have hope and are attempting to live their lives to the fullest. Kiarostami returns to Koker again in Through the Olive Trees for a fictionalized story about the making of Life, and Nothing More following the quitting and recasting of a role and drama that ensues. 

These films are a good sense of the complexity and humanity of Iranians. They also highlight artistic uniqueness and bold political defiance. Iran is a country that lives in its own bubble of theocracy and repression, but many of the people there live their lives with hope despite their strange social dynamics that were created by the regime. It’s these films that give me hope for an Iranian future that embraces freedoms that these filmmakers have fought for their art, but fear for warmongering and bombing of civilians that come with modern war.