From the mud-brick labyrinths of The Ghost Valley’s Treasure Mysteries (1974) to the intersecting feminisms of Jafar Panahi’s The Circle (2000), it is clear from the outset that Mohammad Rasoulof’s latest unflinching drama, The Seed of the Sacred Fig (2024), draws deeply from the well of Iranian cinema – both pre- and post-revolution – to craft and amplify an urgent cry for justice and women’s rights. For many, Rasoulof’s drama will serve as a powerful introduction, offering a window into the rich tradition of Iranian film, renowned worldwide for its potent political subtexts and neorealist, docufiction narratives. For others, it will prove a reminder of the resilience that possesses Iranian filmmakers; how they brave censorship and arrest to expose injustice, challenge authority, and give voice to the marginalised. In this article, I hope to provide a closer glimpse into this New Wave of cinema and to pave an accessible pathway for those interested in exploring these works further.

“The House is Black kickstarted the entire New Wave movement in Iran”

The House is Black (1962)

“Flow to us, flow to us,” speaks Forugh Farrokhzad as the credits roll and we’re left stranded, haunted, by her gut-wrenching images. For The House is Black is not merely a documentary on a Tabrizian leper colony, it is a slice of history that, as Jonathan Glazer notes, is “so coruscating, so humanist, so political” that it demands to be seen. Every frame bleeds, every poem sings. In 1967, following Farrokhzad’s untimely death, La Jetée (1962) director, Chris Marker, would dub the film “a masterpiece” and, shortly thereafter, it was cemented as a staple of early Iranian New Wave cinema. Its influence is undeniable, Makhmalbaf’s The School That Was Blown Away (1998), Kiarostami’s The Wind Will Carry Us (1999), and Majidi’s The Colour of Paradise (1999) all share direct homages to the film. In fact, Professor Hamid Dabashi calls it “the most significant film of the early 1960s” and, in agreeing with Makhmalbaf, suggests that it kickstarted the entire New Wave movement in Iran.

Brick and Mirror (1964)

Ebrahim Golestan’s inky-black melodrama famously dances on the precipice of FilmFarsi and New Wave, battling between trope and truth. It follows Hashem, a taxi driver, forced to care for an abandoned child, and, in typical Golestan fashion, is littered with allegory and societal critique. The title, a reference to an Attar poem: “what the Youth sees in the mirror, the Aged sees in the raw brick,” hints at a wider commentary on alienation and bubbling political instability. Ten years prior, Golestan had photographed the trial of deposed Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, whom he supported, and after which would state: “[Mosaddegh] gave it his best shot […] but the people did not understand”. Alongside Hajir Darioush’s Serpent’s Skin (1964), Brick and Mirror marked a clear change in tone for Iranian cinema, prompting an influx in politically-charged minimal realism.

Hamoun (1989)

Often described as “Fellini-esque,” although, arguably, more Lynchian, Dariush Mehrjui’s Hamoun, released twenty years after his internationally acclaimed masterpiece The Cow (1969), pushes Iranian auteurship to its extremes. Long speculated to be a loose adaptation of Sadegh Hedayat’s The Blind Owl, Mehrjui’s surreal divorce drama bounces freely between dreams and reality, weaving fantasy with delusion, heartbreak with narcissism and is, ultimately, an expert study on self-awareness, or a lack thereof. In an opening sequence as poetic as it is nightmarish, a cinema screen is transformed into a giant mirror reflecting an eclectic mix of medieval philosophers, Kierkegaard readers, and ancient Sufis, back at themselves, all under the watchful eye of Ezzatolah Entezami’s Satan, hooves and all. Here, Mehrjui’s background as a philosopher is on full show, his fascination with identity and metaphysical doubt unfolding amidst a fleeting, powerful dreamscape. From Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation (2011) to Reza Mirkarimi’s A Cube of Sugar (2011), Hamoun’s influence lingers in the bones of so many modern Iranian classics and, after his tragic murder in 2023, it is no doubt that Mehrjui and Hamoun’s legacy will continue to play a major part in the future of Iranian film.

“An impossible to pin-down work that stands unique amongst a flawless filmography”

Close Up (1990)

Martin Scorsese cites Abbas Kiarostami’s Close Up as “refocusing his entire way of thinking”. Not only based on a true story but starring all those involved, including Kiarostami, in a series of elaborate re-enactments, Close Up blurs the lines between fiction and non-fiction until they’re almost indecipherable. The film centres on Hossain Sabzian who, during an impulsive bus journey, decides to claim he is Mohsen Makhmalbaf, writer-director of The Cyclist (1987), a decision that leads to his arrest and fraud trial, which Kiarostami films, and includes in the movie. It is an impossible to pin-down work that stands unique amongst a flawless filmography and has fundamentally influenced not only Iranian but world cinema as a whole. For instance, Scorsese’s pseudo-documentary on Bob Dylan, Rolling Thunder Revue (2019), is taken directly from the mythos of Close Up. In Kiarostami’s words: “People become aware of their own reality, only upon seeing their image, [Close Up is] a world without mirrors”.

Gholam (2017)

It would be remiss to not include the Iranian diaspora in this list, as they are as much a part of the canon as Kiarostami and Farrokhzad. Films such as Holy Spider (2022), A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014), and Babak Anarvi’s truly terrifying Under the Shadow (2016) are, certainly, redefining the horror genre, for example. But, with Gholam, Mitra Tabrizian’s quiet, unassuming debut, she strikes a deeper chord; one that lays out the depressing, unspoken realities of exile. Dr Ali Mirsepassi, writer of The Loneliest Revolution, describes this as “ghorbat” (غربت) – a stranger in a strange land and, with shades of Taste of Cherry (1997), Taxi Tehran (2015), and Still Life (1974), Tabrizian captures the very essence of ‘ghorbat’ in her film. A former war hero, Gholam, played by Shahab Hosseini, wanders aimlessly through London, unable to relate to anybody, not even his own countrymen, until he suddenly finds himself at the centre of another conflict. Shattering, silent desperation pours uncontrollably from this film, depicting an often-hidden truth of the immigrant experience.

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