Celluloid Underground

Poster designed by Giselle Monzon

A film by Ehsan Khoshbakht

Screen Scotland and the BFI Doc Society Fund present a Bofa production

Produced by Mary Bell and Adam Dawtrey

80 mins, in English and Persian, with English subtitles.

trailer

After the Iranian Revolution, a movie collector in Tehran hid thousands of films to prevent their destruction by the new Islamic regime. Despite arrest and torture, he refused to give up his secret. His story of resistance and obsession is told by the boy who became his partner in crime, recalled years later from exile in London. 

Ahmad Jorghanian in Celluloid Underground

Inquiries: adam.dawtrey at btinternet.com

Streaming on Criterion Channel

Festivals:

London BFI – UK

Morelia IFF – Mexico

Viennale IFF – Austria

Mumbai IFF – India

Cambridge – UK

Leeds – UK

LEFFEST – Portugal

Black Movie – Switzerland

Chicago's Festival of Films from Iran – USA

It's all True – Brazil

Midnight Sun Film Festival – Finland

IFFT Thrissur – India

San Diego Asian Film Festival – USA

Documenta Madrid – Spain

Borderlines – UK

Il Cinema Ritrovato – Italy

Dokufest  – Kosovo

Cinema De vlugt – Netherlands

EYE Filmmuseum – Netherlands

Makedox – Macedonia

Cinema Iran – Germany

L'Étrange Festival – France

Filmstadt München Festival – Germany

Asian Film Festival, Barcelona – Spain

The Film Club, Stockholm – Sweden

Verzió International Documentary Film Festival – Hungary

Athens Avant-Garde Film Festival – Greece

Found Footage Fest, Rome – Italy

UCLA Celebration of Iranian Cinema – USA

NFI Hungarian Film Archive, Budapest - Hungary

Argo Factory, Tehran – Iran

Cinemateket, Danish Film Institute, Copenhagen – Denmark

Il Cinema Ritrovato on tour, Bucharest – Romania

Cinematek, Brussels - Belgium

Cinema RITCS, Brussels - Belgium

Seminci, Valladolid - Spain

Celluloid Underground offers a poignant tribute to the resilience of the human spirit. Director Khoshbakht deftly weaves his own story with that of Ahmad Jorghanian to craft a moving portrait of two underground cinephiles for whom films provided solace against oppression. Though their lives were forever impacted by censorship, their unbendable devotion succeeded in preserving cinema as a vessel for cultural expression and communal joy. – Arash Nahandian