With the rise of avant-garde filmmakers within the Sixties, Iran‘s New Wave emerged, marked by the works of pioneers like Ebrahim Golestan, Farrokh Ghaffari, Hajir Darioush, and Forough Farrokhzad.
Later, within the late Sixties and early Seventies, the cinematic contributions of Dariush Mehrjui, Sohrab Shahid-Saless, Arby Ovanessian, and Nasser Taghvai breathed new life into Iranian cinema. These filmmakers rejected the industrial, formulaic productions of the mainstream business, as an alternative embracing a extra genuine portrayal of social realities.
At a time when Iran was getting ready to revolution and political tensions had been excessive, the New Wave stood in stark distinction to the escapist, dreamlike narratives of studio movies, which had been usually impressed by Indian, Turkish, and Egyptian cinema, paying little consideration to the nation’s sociopolitical panorama. Key to the New Wave had been two components: modernist narrative buildings influenced by European cinema and a concentrate on social points, knowledgeable by socialist realism and leftist ideologies. Nevertheless, after the Islamic Revolution, filmmakers confronted extreme censorship underneath the brand new regime. Many had been silenced or compelled to adapt, and the dissonance between their movies and the regime’s imposed social realities turned more and more evident. Filmmakers navigated these restrictions, shaping their works inside the constraints of each content material and symbolism.
Unveiling the Veil: The Rise of a Submit-Hijab Aesthetic
In post-revolutionary Iran, particularly all through the Eighties, cinema turned topic to intense ideological scrutiny. Revolutionary fervor and strict ethical codes reshaped movie, censoring depictions of gender, fashionable life, and social realities. Ladies, specifically, had been reworked from complicated people into symbolic figures — stripped of autonomy and diminished to moms, wives, or veiled shadows. Their bodily presence was erased underneath the ever-present hijab, even in essentially the most intimate home scenes. Love, want, and bodily expression had been banished from the display, changed by inflexible portrayals of the “Islamic-Revolutionary Girl.”
This cultural suppression continued for many years, as political unrest escalated and the state’s grip on creative expression tightened. State-endorsed movies had been rewarded with visibility and sources, whereas important and impartial voices had been systematically silenced. The Fajr Movie Pageant, as soon as a nationwide cinematic platform, developed right into a mouthpiece for the regime. But outdoors this framework, sparks of resistance started to type.
By the early 2000s, digital expertise allowed filmmakers to bypass institutional management. Works like 2025 Cannes Palme d’Or contender Jafar Panahi’s “The Circle” and Granaz Moussavi’s “My Tehran for Sale” marked the early emergence of Iran’s underground cinema — movies made with out permits, overtly confronting gender-based oppression, surveillance, and censorship. Bahman Ghobadi’s “No One Is aware of About Persian Cats” adopted quickly after, capturing the realities of Iran’s censored underground music scene and the specter of exile confronted by artists.
Whereas the primary Iranian New Wave of the Sixties and ’70s moved away from escapist studio movies towards social realism, the second wave — underground cinema — pushed even additional, rejecting the ideological filters imposed by the state. These movies sought to painting life in Iran unmediated, uncooked, and sometimes dangerously near the reality. By 2021, this motion had grown considerably, with notable contributions from filmmakers like Samira Makhmalbaf and Nader Saeivar.
The true turning level, nonetheless, got here in 2022 with the Mahsa Amini protests. The slogan “Girl, Life, Freedom” catalyzed not solely mass demonstrations however a cultural awakening. Filmmakers, impressed by the rebellion, started creating with out hijab, with out state approval, and sometimes in full secrecy. That yr alone, over 70 underground Iranian movies had been submitted to Cannes, signaling a daring, irreversible shift in Iran’s cinematic identification.
Among the many most important works from this period is “Crucial Zone” by Ali Ahmadzadeh, a nightmarish portrait of a society in collapse. It received the highest prize on the Locarno Movie Pageant. “Terrestrial Verses” by Ali Asgari and Alireza Khatami, screened at Cannes, examined the influence of state management on on a regular basis life, particularly for ladies. “My Favourite Cake,” a broadly acclaimed movie, follows an older girl reclaiming her physique and sexual company after a lifetime of repression — resonating deeply with on a regular basis Iranians. In the meantime, “Witness” by Nader Saeivar tackled the problem of femicide and the systemic denial of justice for ladies.
Maybe essentially the most controversial entry is “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” by Mohammad Rasoulof. Accomplished simply earlier than the director fled Iran to flee a jail sentence, the movie portrays the psychological unraveling of a Revolutionary Courtroom choose through the Mahsa protests. Its world acclaim — together with an Oscar nomination — underscored the worldwide significance of Iran’s underground cinema and the ability of artwork to withstand, even within the darkest of occasions.
Iran’s Underground Cinema as a Visible Counterpart to Persian Rap
The second wave of Iran’s cinema, influenced by the manifesto of Ladies, Life, Freedom, presents widespread themes: social and political criticism, a concentrate on sexuality and breaking taboos, and defiance of non secular and ideological restrictions. Formally, these cinematic works share stylistic similarities. Many underground cinematic works are shot with handheld cameras, documentary-style cinematography, and non-studio lighting. They usually make use of nonlinear narratives and open-ended conclusions, omit background scores to emphasise realism, and reject hero-centric plots and mainstream cinematic clichés.
By way of execution, they will largely be categorized inside the realm of cinematic naturalism.
Over the previous three years, Iran’s underground cinema has develop into more and more fearless, striving to depict the suppressed realities of life underneath the Islamic Republic with out hesitation. It’s inconceivable to separate the influence of the “Mahsa Rebellion” from Iran’s underground cinema. Each movie made with out obligatory hijab, underneath troublesome and restricted situations, carries the affect of those that had been shot and killed for freedom.
On this sense, Iran’s underground cinema might be linked to the one impartial and free cultural motion that emerged after the revolution: Persian rap.
Rap music in Iran, since its introduction within the early 2000s, has at all times confronted official restrictions. But, it has arguably develop into the one — and first — anti-power motion to considerably affect youthful generations.
Rap is banned in Iran on account of its important content material, its uncontrollable technique of distribution, and its direct opposition to the regime’s official values, together with the rejection of non secular and ideological themes. On the similar time, its energy as a protest artwork type is tied to its independence. Rap, as a radical style, follows no guidelines and is inherently anti-authoritarian. Whereas each different cultural motion underneath the Islamic Republic has been both eradicated or co-opted, rap has by no means succumbed to such a destiny. Iran’s rappers had been the pioneers of underground artwork on this nation.
Equally, Iran’s underground cinema follows aesthetic buildings harking back to Persian rap. Each actions emerged from related circumstances and function reactions to censorship, repression, and the ideological constraints of the Islamic Republic.
This may be examined from the attitude of each manufacturing strategies and content material and aesthetic discussions: underground cinema is produced with out the approval of the Ministry of Tradition and Islamic Steerage, usually filmed in secrecy and distributed by way of overseas festivals or the web. Equally, Persian rap is recorded in residence studios or casual settings because of the lack of ability to acquire official permits, and it’s distributed by way of the web and social media.
On the similar time, each of those genres are dedicated to social realities. The documentary model in underground cinema, handheld cameras, using non-professional actors, and the unfiltered depiction of actual life just isn’t dissimilar to the lyrical and auditory buildings of Persian rap. In Persian rap, the uncooked and direct facets of on a regular basis life, streets, poverty, dependancy, crime, and inequality are overtly addressed. Using move, variable rhythms, and the subversion of rhyme and poetic type align with the documentary-like execution in underground cinema. The important thing subjects in underground cinema — taboo relationships, homosexuality, prostitution, executions, torture, and political protests — are themes which have lengthy been current in Persian rap. Moreover, latest impartial cinema in Iran has distanced itself from heroism and focuses on marginalized lessons, whereas the narrators of Persian rap are the disillusioned members of society.
An vital level of similarity in each genres is their concentrate on ladies. After the Mahsa motion, Persian rap turned centered on the theme of girls. A widespread wave of rappers (each inside and outdoors of Iran) launched tracks targeted on these protests. The truth is, all types of Persian rap — from road rap and gangsta to philosophical and social hip-hop — had been used within the service of protest, with many works accompanied by heavy beats, darkish atmospheres, and harsh narrative types. Some artists even integrated audio samples from road protests into their music to reconstruct the environment of the motion.
Equally, in Iran’s underground cinema, using cellular/archival photos from road protests, real-life conditions (such because the “morality police” vans and hijab officers, courts, and detention facilities), and precise protest sounds have develop into a part of the aesthetic of those cinematic works. Due to this fact, Iran’s second impartial and free-thinking cultural motion — underground cinema — might be referred to as “Cine-Rap”: a cinema that’s nearer to rap than to conventional cinematic storytelling guidelines. Like rap, it attracts on expressive, documentary, and social freedoms, and like rap, it’s distributed by way of the web. The regime has no capability to fight it.
Ali Farahmand is an writer, movie critic, film-studies lecturer and filmmaker. He has been writing movie opinions and articles within the Iranian press for greater than a decade, and educating in movie institutes and artwork universities. Since 2022, he has been a movie critic on the Voice of America. In 2023, he based an impartial movie research college in Tehran referred to as FCI (Movie Criticism Institute). He has written and directed a function movie referred to as “It is just sound that is still.” His private web site: ali-farahmand.com