The historical path of Iranian cinema from the East India Company film studios in India where the very first Iranian films were made, to major European film festivals, has been long and winding and indicative of the social and cultural history of Iran.

Talking about Iranian cinema at a press conference with the HFPA, director Asghar Farhadi rightly pointed out, “There’s a great deal of talent in that region. And the region itself is one where unfortunately there is something strange going on. I believe that the conflicts that arise within countries in that region can very much be softened and resolved through cultural means. There’s such a lot of talent there and when I go all over the world teaching in workshops, I have students from different countries coming from all these different countries, and when I see them, I think of them almost as if they are all members of a family and I wonder why conflict among these people is there”.

The early Iranian phases of cinema are intricately linked with Iran’s political developments during the 1904 Constitutional Revolution when, following early social and political reform, Persian directors like Abdolhossein Sepanta and Esmail Koushan took advantage of the richness of Persian literature and ancient Persian Mythology.

Professor Ovanes Ohanian made the first Iranian film called Abi and Rabi in 1930 following in 1933 he made his second feature titled Haji Agha. Professor Ohanian also established the first film school in Iran along with the first acting school in Iran and India.  The famous Iranian film with sound titled Lor Girl directed by Abdolhossein Sepanta, also known as The Iran of Yesterday and The Iran of Today, was produced by Ardeshir Irani and Abdolhossein Sepanta in the Imperial Film Company in Bombay. The iconic film was based on a comparison between the state of security in Iran at the end of the Qajar dynasty and during Reza Shah period. Sepanta also directed classic movies such as Ferdowsi (the life story of the most celebrated epic poet of Iran), Shirin ad Farhad, a classic Iranian love story and Black Eyes, the story of Nader Shah’s invasion of India. He directed Layla and Majnun in 1937, an Eastern adaptation of “Romeo and Juliet” which was extremely popular in India too.

Iranian cinema has experienced a resurgence since the 1990s, paradoxically due to the cultural and political milieu which restricted expression and gave greater meaning to artistic expression. Post-Islamic revolutionary Iranian cinema has, of course, gained the attention of international audiences who have been struck by its powerful, poetic and often explicitly political explorations. Iran’s cinematic heyday has seen directors like Mohsen Makhmalbalf and Abbas Kiarostami push the boundaries of political discourse in artistic and politically compelling manners. The use of children in films, for example, provided for the development of a distinctly Persian style of filmmaking to express what is often far harder in more explicit forms without outright confrontation with the authorities and breaking into open polemics.

The present-day Iranian film industry owes its progress to, Esmail Koushan and Farrokh Ghaffari. By establishing the first National Iranian Film Society in 1949 at the Iran Bastan Museum, Ghaffari laid the foundation for alternative and non-commercial films in Iran. This created a pathway for filmmakers like Dariush Mehrjui who’s film titled The Cow (1969) screened at the 1971 Venice Film Festival, won the critics’ prize. The Runner, a 1984 masterpiece by Amir Naderi, was something of a revelation when it premiered at the Festival of the Three Continents in Nantes. Shot in multiple locations during the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), The Runner crafted a cinematic landscape through the solitary life of a young boy mesmerized by running, a deeply moving allegory. Another transformative moment in the global reception of Iranian cinema came when Samira Makhmalbaf premiered her debut film The Apple (1998) at the Cannes Film Festival when she was just 18. Asghar Farhadi too altered the perception of what Iranian cinema had to offer. Farhadi’s family drama A Separation (2011) won a Golden Globe award, his The Salesman (2016) and The Past (2013) were also nominated in the Foreign Langue category. The ingenious cinematography of Farhadi’s director of photography, Mahmoud Kalari, has also been instrumental in defining this sense of cinematic drama.

The landscape of Iranian cinema for the past 100 years has been an extraordinary cinematic experience which has set Iranian films on a creative path from which it has never diverged and has inspired successive generations of filmmakers.