Arbaeen (Nasser Taghvai, 1970)

Arbaeen (Nasser Taghvai, 1970)

During the annual mourning ritual held on the 40th day after the martyrdom of the Shia Imam, Hossein, men in the southern city of Bushehr rhythmically strike their chests in time with the recited elegies. In this short documentary shot in colour (Mehrdad Fakhimi's work), director Nasser Taghvai uses the sounds of environment to create a rhythmic editing, in sync with the movements and solemn strikes of the bare-chested men. There are occasional digressions to symbolic cutaways – common in Iran New Wave – of people outside and even a pair of dead fishes washed ashore.

Cheshmeh [The Spring] (Arby Ovanessian, 1971)

A film of unravelled mysteries and repressed longings, in Cheshmeh the nonlinear narrative, moving freely in time, is set in a Muslim community but is centered around a Christian woman who is the love interest of two men and married to a third. The interwoven fates are destined to end in tragedy, but the film leaves what potentially comprises a tragedy off-frame. Despite its richness in Armenian details (which was the cultural heritage of its director Arby Ovanessian), the film shares a significant number of threads with the Iranian New Wave films, particularly in its sense of isolation and fear of strangers, but also sets the hypnotic, numbing pace that the works of some of Ovanessian's contemporaries were going to be known for. 

Kalagh [The Crow] (Bahram Beyzaie, 1977)

From the new issue of Sight and Sound (September 2025), dedicated to "More Hidden Gems", here's my pick for a hidden gem that deserves to be restored and revived. – EK

Safar (Bahram Beyzaie, 1972)

Safar

Written for the world premiere of the brand new restoration (from the camera negative) at Il Cinema Ritrovato 2025. – EK

A 12-year-old orphan with a habit of seeking out his potential parents takes his friend along on a journey through the wastelands on the outskirts of Tehran. Seemingly a children’s folk tale, Safar is so visually singular that it evades easy breakdown. It is allegorical, but allegory is the engine; visual density the result.

Cinema is a Machine of Empathy

The Stranger and the Fog

“CINEMA  IS  A  MACHINE  OF  EMPATHY”:  RESTORING  AND CURATING IRANIAN’S CINEMATIC HERITAGE.

An interview with Ehsan Khoshbakht  

By André Habib (Université de Montréal)

The  international  recognition  of  Iranian  cinema  parallels  its  presence  on  the  world  festival  circuit,  from  Gaffari’s  1963  Night  of  the  Hunchback,  through  Kiarostami’s  Palme  d’or  for  The  Taste  of  Cherry  to  Rossoulof’s  in  extremis  addition to the 2024 Cannes Festival selection. These last few years, festivals (in particular  Cannes,  Venice,  Berlin,  Locarno)  have  been  pivotal  in  diagnosing  the  “state  of  affairs”  in  the  Islamic  Republic  of  Iran,  the  ongoing  creative  struggle  and resistance filmmakers have opposed to the regime. We could also add that, over the past ten years, it is also via festivals, and particularly those specialized in showcasing film restorations, that we have witnessed a reappraisal and renewed appreciation  for  works,  mostly  shot  before  the  revolution,  that  had  fallen  into  relative  oblivion  and  which  all,  in  some  respect,  display  eloquent  forms  of  politic  and  poetic  resistance.  It  is  safe  to  say  that  nowhere  is  this  truer  than  at  the  Cineteca  di  Bologna,  via  its  now  world-renowned  Cinema  Ritrovato  festival and through the work of the Immagine ritrovata laboratory. Crucial to this new wave  of  rediscoveries  is  Ehsan  Khoshbakht,  who  has,  since  2018,  worked  as  co-director of the Cinema Ritrovato festival, apart from curating many ambitious programs  across  the  world  (notably,  recently,  the  October  13th  to  November  27th MoMA program, Iranian Cinema Before the Revolution, spanning fifty years and  presenting  close  to  70  feature  and  short  films).  He  is  also  a  filmmaker,  an  architect and an essential figure, with others, of the contemporary reassessment of the importance and richness of the history of Iranian cinema. Shortly before the launch of the Fall of 2023 MoMA cycle, we had a chance to interview him for this special issue of Regards. 

The House is Black (Forough Farrokhzad, 1962)

The only film directed by Iranian poet Forough Farrokhzad before her premature death at the age of 32 is considered one of the greatest documentaries ever made. Set in a leper colony in northwest Iran, The House Is Black is a dialogue between the passions of the poet (Farrokhzad) and the voice of reason (Ebrahim Golestan, also the film's producer). It opens with a blank screen and then takes the viewer into the world on unwatchable but then in miracle of poetry ends on sublime when everything – even the unseen – is understood and accepted.

Far From Home (Sohrab Shahid Saless, 1975)

A transitional film linking Sohrab Shahid Saless's Iranian period with his extended stay in Germany, Far From Home was a meditation on social isolation and stillness. No other film has depicted the painful repetitiveness of an immigrant's life in such candid detail as the film gives us a few days in the life of Husseyin (played by actor and director Parviz Sayyad), a Turkish 'guest worker' in West Berlin.  There's an abundance of elements from other Shahid Saless films: trains, letters written and read, as well as the despairing sight of empty, unmade beds. The vanity of life is captured in dead moments, when even after a character has walked out the frame the camera lingers, staring into the vacuum and revealing a bleak vision of the world of the exploited and the rootless.

Experience (Abbas Kiarostami, 1973)

Abbas Kiarostami’s first mid-length film, The Experience, tells the story of a photography shop errand boy who falls in love with the daughter of a client. Written by his friend Amir Naderi, a renowned director in his own right, as an autobiographical reflection, the film showcases Kiarostami's minimalist and distanced style in full form and stands out as one of his significant works exploring desire and rejection.

The Stranger and the Fog (Bahram Beyzaie, 1974)

Bahram Beyzaie on the set of The Stranger and the Fog

Impossible to see for decades, Bahram Beyzaie's dazzling The Stranger and the Fog, about a mysterious stranger arriving in a drifting boat to a coastal village and falling for a woman, is an endlessly symbolic tale in which ghosts of the past, narrow-minded villagers and forces beyond the controls of the characters take the viewer into a dizzying labyrinth of rituals. In the film's meticulously structured circular narrative, characters, times and spaces rhyme and mirror each other, turning filmmaking into an act of dreaming. Characters are the product of each other's imagination before turning into myth. The film gives the centre of both attention/desire and control to a woman of will therefore it goes beyond the confines of the victimised women of the 1970s Iranian cinema.

The Crown Jewels of Iran (Ebrahim Golestan, 1965) | MoMA

Ebrahim Golestan’s most visually dazzling documentary, The Crown Jewels of Iran  is ostensibly a showcase of the precious jewels housed in the treasury of the Central Bank of Iran, but in reality, it is a bold critique of the treachery of Persian kings. The film’s narration sharply contrasts with its imagery: vibrant shots of jewels in rotation are juxtaposed with Golestan’s voice, condemning the decadence of past rulers. Banned and never shown, the film's powerful message remained hidden for years.

Chess of the Wind (Mohammad Reza Aslani, 1976)

In a mesmerizing take on House of Usher-like themes, set in a decaying feudal mansion, the death of a noble family’s matriarch sets off a power struggle. Mohammad Reza Aslani’s debut feature plunges into a labyrinth of corruption and decay within the household, subtly foreshadowing the revolution to come, while masterfully depicting the hidden inner struggles of Iranian society. This recently rediscovered gem was thought lost after its misunderstood premiere at the 1976 Tehran International Film Festival. However, in 2020, it was restored by the World Cinema Foundation and has since become one of the most acclaimed Iranian pre-revolutionary films. The film features a hauntingly eerie score by Sheyda Gharachedaghi, one of the most prolific female film composers of the 1960s and 1970s.

Brick and Mirror (Ebrahim Golestan, 1964)

The cover of the original pressbook

Iranian cinema’s first true modern masterpiece, Brick and Mirror explores fear and responsibility in the wake of the CIA- and MI6-orchestrated 1953 coup. A Dostoyevskian tale of a Tehran cab driver’s search for the mother of an abandoned baby, it presents a harrowing image of a society rife with corrupted morals and widespread alienation. While rooted in a specific social context, its message resonates universally. The characters often speak without truly communicating, their soliloquies echoing unheard in the endless night they inhabit.

Bonbast [Dead End] (Parviz Sayyad, 1977)

Mary Apick in Bonbast

A daydreamer of a girl (Mary Apick) sees a man standing under her window day and night. Thinking that he must be in love with her, she gets into an imaginary conversation with the man (in a fine use of inner voice) as he continues to follow her everywhere. Eventually, they talk but his and her intentions are not the same, leading to one of the most shattering endings in Iranian cinema.

In the opening title card, Sayyad mentions Anton Chekov as the inspiration for the story (the story, unmentioned, is From the Diary of a Young Girl) but adds more ambiguity by stating that "the current climate in society" prompted him to tell the story hence aiming for one of the most forward films of the late 1970s about the search for and failure in finding happiness in a society built on fear and surveillance.

Iranian New Wave: 1962–79 at Melbourne International Film Festival

Dead End by Parviz Sayyad

Iranian Cinema Before the Revolution, 1925-1979, a landmark retrospective held last year at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, was an eye-opener that traced a national cinema still largely unknown to a wide international audience. Thanks to the availability of new restorations and rare archival film prints, the majority of which now banned in Iran, an immensely creative period was revisited in splendid detail, revealing the roots of a rich and visionary cinematic tradition. While the New York program featured over five decades of Iranian cinema encompassing the avant-garde and the popular, this selection for the Melbourne International Film Festival, curated by the original team behind the MoMA exhibition, focuses on works associated with Cinema-ye Motafavet, or the Iranian New Wave.

Entezar (Amir Naderi, 1974)

Entezar [Waiting]

Playing at Il Cinema Ritrovato, June 25, 2024.

Entezar, Amir Naderi’s second film for Kanoon – the Iranian institution in charge of producing cultural goods, including films, for children and young adults – was a deft and calculated move away from the gritty street dramas and crime films of the early 1970s that made Naderi famous but also left him feel artistically unfulfilled.

The Sealed Soil [Khak-e Sar bé Mohr] (Marva Nabili, 1977)

The Sealed Soil

The digital restoration of The Sealed Soil [Khak-e Sar bé Mohr], directed by Marva Nabili, will be premiered at UCLA Film & Television Archive on June 15 and a week later at Bologna's Il Cinema Ritrovato.

Khak-e Sar bé Mohr chronicles the repetitive and repressed life of Roo-Bekheir, a young woman in a poor village in southwest Iran, and her resistance to forced marriage. It’s a formally rigorous, if emotionally distanced, critique of patriarchy and the spurious reform of Iranian agricultural life that was a factor in the 1979 revolution.

Tabi’at-e Bijan [Still Life] (Sohrab Shahid Saless, 1974)

Still Life

Tabi'at-e Bijan (Still Life). 1974. Iran. Written and directed by Sohrab Shahid Saless. With Zadour Bonyadi, Mohammed Kani, Hedayatollah Navid. 93 min.

An elderly railway signalman is unable to understand the meaning of “retirement” when he is handed over his retirement letter. Still Life, the film that shook Iranian cinema to its core and won the Silver Bear at the Berlinale, is an unforgettable, masterfully paced exercise in stillness and loneliness that doesn’t shrink from depicting exploitative tendencies within contemporary Iranian society. Shahid Saless uses the inarticulacy of his protagonist as an aesthetic strategy and finds poetry in seemingly dead moments. Made only in 11 days and shot with the painterly vision of the cinematographer Houshang Baharlou, this landmark work pushed the boundaries of cinema like no other Iranian film of the 1970s. – Ehsan Khoshbakht

Night of the Hunchback (Farrokh Ghaffari, 1964) | MoMA

Shab-e Ghouzi (Night of the Hunchback). 1964. Iran. Directed by Farrokh Ghaffari. Screenplay by Ghaffari, Jalal Moghadam. With Ghaffari, Pari Saberi, Paria Hakemi, Mohamad Ali Keshavarz.

Inspired by a tale in A Thousand and One Nights, this black comedy takes place over the course of one of those nights, as a troupe of traveling actors, the father of a bride, and a hairdresser and his assistant (played by director Farrokh Ghaffari himself) try to rid themselves of an unwelcome corpse while uptown Tehranis party to Ray Charles R&B. In a nod to Alfred Hitchcock’s The Trouble with Harry, Ghaffari, also a critic and film historian, intended this film as a critique of upper-class pretensions and an ode to simple folkloric pleasures, and while the film was a commercial flop the film nonetheless gained international attention and promised a new beginning for Iranian cinema. – Ehsan Khoshbakht

Dayereh-ye Mina [The Cycle] (Dariush Mehrjui, 1974)

The Cycle (Dariush Mehrjui, 1974-76)

Dariush Mehrjui and his wife were brutally murdered on October 14, 2023. MoMA screens this film on November 1.

This harrowing tale of poverty and drug addiction in the slums, in which people desperately sell their blood to survive, is based on Gholam-Hossein Sa’dei’s short story “Garbage Dump.” Banned due to objections from the Iranian Medical Association, The Cycle was shelved for three years before it was eventually shown at the Shiraz Arts Festival. The left saw the story of the poor selling contaminated blood for injection into new veins as a metaphor for the corruption of Pahlavis. For Mehrjui, however, this was more a candid investigation of a real problem, and it eventually helped inspire the formation of the Iranian Blood Transfusion Organization. The casting of the popular filmfarsi star Forouzan was controversial, but her fine performance proved the versatility of Iranian actors. – Ehsan Khoshbakht

The Cow (Dariush Mehrjui, 1969) | MoMA

The Cow (Dariush Mehrjui, 1969)

Dariush Mehrjui and his wife were brutally murdered on October 14, 2023. MoMA screens this film on October 26.

This milestone of the Iranian New Wave portrays, with heartbreaking intensity, the themes of solitude and obsession in the story of a poor villager (unforgettably played by Ezzatolah Entezami) whose only source of joy and livelihood is his cow. When the cow is mysteriously killed one night, the metamorphosis begins. Based on short stories by psychiatrist Gholam-Hossein Sa’edi, The Cow was smuggled to the Venice Film Festival in defiance of an export ban, where it was almost immediately and internationally recognized as a masterpiece. Poignantly wrapped in layers of religion and leftist politics (two major forces of the 1979 revolution), The Cow came under the spotlight more than a decade later, when Ayatollah Khomeini hailed it as an example of “good cinema,” as opposed to the many “corrupting films” of the Pahlavi era. – Ehsan Khoshbakht