Five award-win­ning Iran­ian direc­tors you should know about

The Mid­dle East remains a mys­tery to a vast por­tion of main­stream West­ern media, but talk to world cin­e­ma lovers and avid film fes­ti­val goers and they’ll like­ly speak of the region’s cre­ativ­i­ty with great admi­ra­tion. That the Fajr Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val (FIFF) – the largest annu­al event on Iran’s film cal­en­dar – is now in its 34^th year is itself a state­ment of intent on behalf of the nation’s diverse audi­ence and film­mak­ing talent.

Iran­ian films have won over 300 inter­na­tion­al awards over the last decade, and the Iran­ian New Wave is regard­ed as one of the most vital con­tem­po­rary art-house move­ments. Despite an increas­ing­ly com­plex dis­tri­b­u­tion net­work, a spike in cen­sor­ship and reduced cre­ative con­trol, all com­ing into effect since the Islam­ic Rev­o­lu­tion of 1979, the region’s cin­e­ma con­tin­ues to thrive. With the FIFF under­way, here are five high-pro­file Iran­ian direc­tors to follow.

Direc­tor, screen­writer, pho­tog­ra­ph­er and film pro­duc­er Kiarosta­mi has been active since before the Rev­o­lu­tion, but gar­nered wider acclaim dur­ing the ​’80s before win­ning the Palme d’Or with 1997’s Taste of Cher­ry – a time when the US embar­go and first Gulf War were cre­at­ing neg­a­tive pre­con­cep­tions of Iran. Yet Kiarostami’s work deals with both polit­i­cal and philo­soph­i­cal issues in an evoca­tive and poet­ic way. Con­sid­ered by many to be the most dis­tinc­tive voice in Iran­ian cin­e­ma, his films fuse sim­plic­i­ty and com­plex­i­ty, fic­tion and non-fic­tion, while typ­i­cal­ly draw­ing on every­day life, rur­al hard­ship and the indi­vid­ual in Iran­ian soci­ety. Despite his suc­cess on the inter­na­tion­al stage, the Iran­ian gov­ern­ment refus­es to per­mit screen­ings of some of his films.

Fem­i­nist activist and film­mak­er Tah­mineh Milani’s work puts social real­i­ties front and cen­tre. Her crit­i­cism of cer­tain nepo­tis­tic and hyp­o­crit­i­cal prac­tices of the Islam­ic Republic’s admin­is­tra­tion have earned her a youth­ful fol­low­ing in Iran and land­ed her in trou­ble with the author­i­ties. Impris­oned in 2001 for prop­a­gat­ing ​‘anti-rev­o­lu­tion­ary’ sen­ti­ments in her film The Hid­den Half – with its love sto­ry between a rad­i­cal uni­ver­si­ty stu­dent and an old­er man – Milani was released fol­low­ing protests from world-famous direc­tors includ­ing Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la and Mar­tin Scorsese.

Her cin­e­ma holds a crit­i­cal mir­ror to soci­ety, and Milani believes the task of film­mak­ers is hard­er than that of artists – both due to the spe­cif­ic obsta­cles faced in Islam­ic cul­ture and due to cinema’s greater edu­ca­tion­al and crit­i­cal capac­i­ty. Two Women was ground­break­ing in its ques­tion­ing of women’s free and thank­less labours with­in the domes­tic space as moth­ers and house­keep­ers. In 2003 Milani received the Grand Prix from the Gene­va Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val Tout Ecran for The Fifth Reac­tion, and lat­er the Best Pic­ture award at the LA Film Fes­ti­val for The Unwant­ed Woman. Her works paint Iran­ian women with agency, and exam­ines resilience in try­ing situations.

A for­mer assis­tant to Kiarosta­mi in the mid-’90s, Panahi made a num­ber of his own films in the ear­ly 2000s about ordi­nary life in mod­ern Iran. These includ­ed the sto­ry of a trau­ma­tised war vet­er­an in Crim­son Gold and the tribu­la­tions faced by three female ex-cons – a nod to the wider impris­on­ment of all women – with The Cir­cle, which saw him run afoul of the Iran­ian gov­ern­ment. He was pre­vent­ed from leav­ing the coun­try and banned from mak­ing films for 20 years, yet con­tin­ued to work under the radar, releas­ing works in col­lab­o­ra­tion with oth­er directors.

His self-ref­er­en­tial This Is Not a Film was smug­gled into Cannes on a USB stick hid­den in a cake. Both a nod to his men­tor Kiarostami’s Ten and a semi-spon­ta­neous, semi-script­ed exer­cise in immers­ing the view­er into Iran­ian people’s dai­ly lives, Taxi Tehran earned Panahi the Gold­en Bear at the 2015 Berlin Film Fes­ti­val. In this self-reflex­ive and enjoy­able ride through the city – Panahi him­self act­ing as our guide – we spend the day in the com­pa­ny of a boot­leg DVD sell­er, a human rights lawyer and a nine-year-old aspir­ing filmmaker.

The daugh­ter of one of the direc­tors who paved the way for the Iran­ian New Wave, Mohsen Makhmal­baf, Sami­ra Makhmal­baf has been an inter­na­tion­al­ly acclaimed film­mak­er and screen­writer since her ear­ly twen­ties. Her step-moth­er, Marzieh Meshki­ni, is also a sig­nif­i­cant film­mak­er in her own right, while her younger sis­ter Hana’s found-footage and doc­u­men­tary films thrust her into the fes­ti­val cir­cuit at 18. This cre­ative fam­i­ly envi­ron­ment was influ­en­tial for the now 30-year-old film­mak­er, but Makhmalbaf’s direc­to­r­i­al style remains dis­tinct, cast­ing almost an anthro­po­log­i­cal eye over the bor­der regions and prac­tices of Iran­ian society.

In both The Apple and The Day I Became a Woman, Makhmal­baf charts the sub­jec­tive expe­ri­ence of sev­er­al female char­ac­ters, inves­ti­gat­ing inte­ri­or states and spaces through the exte­ri­or appear­ance of objects and social struc­tures – although her films also spend con­sid­er­able time observ­ing their male char­ac­ters. Shot in Afghanistan, her 2008 film Two-Legged Horse was put on hold because of a bomb­ing tar­get­ed specif­i­cal­ly at the film crew. It even­tu­al­ly opened at the Toron­to Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val and is one of her most impor­tant works.

Farha­di may be the most famil­iar name to UK and US audi­ences, hav­ing made crit­i­cal and com­mer­cial break­throughs with A Sep­a­ra­tion in 2011, which deals with a Mus­lim couple’s divorce, and The Past in 2013, star­ring Bérénice Bejo in a dias­po­ra tale of bro­ken fam­i­lies. The for­mer became the first Iran­ian movie to win the Oscar for Best For­eign Lan­guage Film, while the lat­ter was nom­i­nat­ed for a BAF­TA and a Gold­en Globe.

His work has its roots in the films of Iran­ian New Wave mas­ters like Kiarosta­mi, but it also evokes oth­er non-West­ern auteurs, such as Satya­jit Ray, through its com­plex female leads. Uni­ver­sal themes of love, jeal­ousy and dis­trust run through Farhadi’s films, the walk­ing-on-eggshells rela­tion­ships he likes to explore draw­ing con­text and ten­sion from the meet­ing of East­ern and West­ern cul­tures, the pol­i­tics of every­day life and the con­trast in social expec­ta­tions for men and women. The director’s new project, Forushande, is cur­rent­ly in pro­duc­tion, and it bodes well that he has cho­sen to work in Tehran once again, keep­ing this fas­ci­nat­ing region on the radar.

For more info on FIFF vis­it fajr​film​fes​ti​val​.com