5 Iranian Films to see After the Sanctions

Iran does movies! Iran has always done movies, sanctions or not. (We know you knew that.) The list below is just an arbitrary selection of films that made me laugh, cry or both. Some may argue they aren’t the best five. Most, though, will agree that they’re pretty damn excellent. Some will whine that there’s nothing particularly exotic about them. Do yourself a favor and ignore those people. Consider this list a reminder or a starting point, depending on what your relationship with subtitled movies is.

These are good cinema. After all, they don’t hand out Bears, Palms and Oscars for nothing.

1. Men at work (Mani Haghighi, 2006)

Four friends, each struggling with a midlife crisis, are driving back to Tehran after a skiing weekend, hoping to be home before a super important soccer World Cup qualifier starts.

Then one of them has to pee.

Enter “the rock”. A suspiciously phallically shaped monolith on the edge of the mountain suddenly gives them a goal: to move it. The rock won’t budge. The men insist. Yes, this really is a feature about four men trying to push a rock downhill. Except it really is about four men (and two women), their loves and disappointments, jobs, families, fears and friendships. And it’s funny as fuck.

2. Offside (Jafar Panahi 2006)

Speaking of the 2006 World Cup qualifiers, Offside has another story for you. Say you’re a girl passionate about soccer. Sister, a problem! Girls who dress like boys, walk like boys and talk very little to sneak to the stadium although they’re banned, get put into a hold pen until the match is over and the vice police gets them. Luckily, at least one the female posse is a veteran of such procedures. A hilarious story about young women trying to negotiate their lives through a maze of rules they hate, men who don’t know how to deal with them, and a trip to the toilet (yes, really!), told to the soundtrack of a soccer game. And since you can’t see the game, you don’t even have to know the offside rule. Sweet.

3. 10 (Abbas Kiarostami, 2002)

The idea, revealed Kiarostami, came when he heard about a therapist who received her patients in her car while her office was being refurbished. Indeed, there’s something therapeutic about discussing things in cars (like, you don’t actually have to look at each other), and there is certainly a lot of talking going on. In ten stories, the driver talks to her son, her sister, a prostitute, a bride … The central story, her three talks with her smart-ass, very angry and very vulnerable son, tries to make sense of the dissolution of her marriage to the boy’s father and her position as a remarried professional photographer in a patriarchal society. Might make you laugh, cry and identify with the characters. Because you drive and you love, yes?

4. Separation (Asghar Farhadi, 2011)

Drama happens when two irrefutable logics clash. In Separation, Simin’s need to emigrate in order to provide a better life for their daughter clashes with Nader’s need to stay in Iran and take care of his aging father who has Alzheimer’s.

This causes tensions, lies, abuse, violence, despair and separation. How do we, as a species, balance the need to provide for our offspring with the need to care for our elders? And how do we do it in societies that stifle us with conventions? Prepare handkerchiefs.

5. Apple (Samira Makhmalbaf, 1998)

Here’s a depressing one for you: eleven-year old twins have been locked up all their lives by their father and blind mother. They don’t talk, they howl, they don’t walk, they … you get the picture. Except, surprisingly, it’s far less depressing when you actually watch it. Perhaps because Samira Makhmalbaf was a teenager herself when she filmed this documentary about the Naderi girls’ first encounter with the world. Perhaps because there is something touching in the father’s explanation that his daughters are like flowers that will wilt in the sun. Perhaps it’s the camera. Perhaps our inner voyeur. Whatever it is, don’t miss this one.

Happy watching.