Twenty-Eighth Annual Festival of Films from Iran

Co-organized with the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, this festival features a wide-ranging selection of films from Iran and the diaspora. The festival is cosponsored by the ILEX Foundation. Additional films will be shown at the AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center in Silver Spring, Maryland.

Schedule:

January 21, 2024

Leila’s Brothers - 2:00 pm - 4:50 pm

his sprawling, raucous family comedy-drama from Saeed Roustaee (Just 6.5) is anchored by a powerful performance from Taraneh Alidoosti (The Salesman, About Elly) in the titular role. At forty, Leila has spent her life taking care of her parents and four brothers, all of whom are struggling financially in one way or another, while her father cares only about climbing the extended family’s social order to become its official patriarch. As the family voice of reason, Leila comes up with a business idea to save them, but it will only work if the hapless male contingent doesn’t ruin it. The Hollywood Reporter’s Jordan Mintzer writes that the film evokes “a dog-eat-dog Iran stifled by fraud, class struggle, clan rivalries and an economy that’s forever teetering on the brink of disaster. Filled with powerhouse turns by an ensemble cast . . . Leila’s Brothers reveals the 32-year-old Roustaee to be a masterly, if aggressively unwieldy, filmmaker whose voice is clearly one to be reckoned with.” (Dir.: Saeed Roustaee, Iran, 2022, 169 min., DCP, Persian with English subtitles)

January 26, 2024

Winners - 7:00 pm - 8:25 pm

Directed by British-Iranian filmmaker Hassan Nazer, the United Kingdom’s official 2023 Academy Awards entry is a cinephile’s delight. When an Oscar statuette intended for Asghar Farhadi, who refused to attend the 2017 ceremony in protest of then–United States President Donald Trump’s “Muslim ban,” gets lost in the mail, it ends up in the hands of two tykes in a remote Iranian village who have no idea what it is. But it just so happens that the local scrapyard is run by two former actors (Hossein Abedini and Reza Naji, playing themselves). Stuffed with references to the cinema of Iran and beyond, not to mention a few cheeky cameos, Nazer’s film is “an ode to cinema and the joys it brings, and it also pays tribute to the great achievements of Iranian filmmakers, dedicating the work to Abbas Kiarostami, Asghar Farhadi, Majid Maijdi and Jafar Panahi,” wrote Anna Smith in Deadline. (Dir.: Hassan Nazer, United Kingdom, 2022, 85 min., DCP, Persian with English subtitles)

January 28, 2024

The Persian Version - 2:00 pm - 3:50 pm

Coming from two countries at odds with each other, Iranian American Leila (Layla Mohammadi) strives to find balance and embrace her opposing cultures, while boldly challenging the labels society is so quick to project upon her. When her family reunites in New York City for her father’s heart transplant, Leila navigates her relationships at arm’s length in an effort to keep her “real” life separate from her family life. However, when her secret is unceremoniously revealed, so are the distinct parallels between her life and that of her mother, Shireen (Niousha Noor). Punctuated by a bright color palette, snappy comedic relief, and vibrant dance numbers, The Persian Version delivers an honest portrayal of a woman who remains unapologetically herself, blended seamlessly into a heartfelt story about family, belonging, and the undeniable influence of pop music. Winning both the Audience Award and the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award in the U.S. Dramatic Competition at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, writer-director-producer Maryam Keshavarz delivers a universal and timely story of the Iranian and the Iranian American experience. Descriptions courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics. (Dir.: Maryam Keshavarz, United States, 2023, 107 min., DCP, English and Persian with English subtitles)

February 9, 2024

Terrestrial Verses - 7:00 pm - 8:20 pm

This film showing was originally scheduled to take place on January 19th.

Terrestrial Verses follows everyday people from all walks of life as they navigate the cultural, religious, and institutional constraints imposed on them by various social authorities, from schoolteachers to bureaucrats. These stirring vignettes, humorous and affecting, capture the spirit and determination of people amid adversity, offering a nuanced portrait of a complex society. “[A] thoroughly modern work of bracing concision, elegance and blistering deadpan humor, one that pulses with sorrow and outrage over the absurdity of authoritarian dictates that aim to crush souls” (Sheri Linden, The Hollywood Reporter). (Dir.: Ali Asgari & Alireza Khatami, Iran, 2023, 77 min., DCP, Persian with English subtitles)

February 11, 2024

Dream’s Gate - 2:00 pm - 3:10 pm

In this diaristic documentary, first-time filmmaker Negin Ahmadi-who admits up front to a habit of putting herself in danger when life makes her restless—leaves her home in Iran and embeds herself with an all-female Kurdish militia unit fighting against ISIS in Syria. A Kurd herself, she is fascinated by the women’s courage and commitment. Through harrowing scenes of combat and more intimate moments away from the front, the fighters open up to her about their lives. Many of them, for instance, joined the militia to escape the strictures of the patriarchal society in which they live. “[F]or Negin, the filming process becomes a soul-searching diary that provocatively denounces the established cinematic narratives of war” (Lorenzo Esposito, Karlovy Vary International Film Festival). Sadly, we learn at the end that some of the women we’ve gotten to know didn’t survive the war. (Negin Ahmadi, France/Iran/Norway, 2023, 78 min., DCP, Persian and Kurdish with English subtitles)

February 16, 2024

See You Friday, Robinson - 7:00 pm - 8:40 pm

On the final weekend of the Festival of Films from Iran, we pay tribute to Ebrahim Golestan, a monumental figure in pre-revolution Iranian cinema, who died at the ripe old age of one hundred last year. Mitra Farahani’s film presents an epistolary and filmic exchange between Golestan and French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard. Encouraged by Farahani, Godard began sending cryptic emails from his mansion in Switzerland to Golestan in his English manor, always signing off “see you Friday, Robinson,” in a nod to Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. Their touching and amusing correspondence is a treasure trove of both men’s thoughts on cinema, art, and mortality as both approached the end of their lives. Golestan’s landmark debut feature, Brick and Mirror, will screen on February 18 at 2 p.m. (Mitra Farahani, France/Switzerland/Iran, 2021, 97 min., DCP, Persian, French and English with English subtitles)

February 18, 2024

Brick and Mirror - 2:00 pm - 4:10 pm

With this landmark debut feature, director Ebrahim Golestan delivered a jolt of modernism to pre-revolution Iranian cinema, laying the groundwork for the country’s first, still often overlooked new wave. When a mysterious woman (feminist literary icon Forugh Farrokhzad) abandons a baby in the backseat of his cab one night, Tehran taxi driver Hashem (Zakaria Hashemi) is launched on a journey through the city’s unfeeling bureaucracy as he attempts to find a home for the infant—a situation that soon puts him in conflict with his nurturing girlfriend, Taji (Taji Ahmadi). Melding the influences of Persian poetry, 1960s European art cinema, and Wellesian expressionism,?Brick and Mirror?offers a portrait of a crumbling relationship that also functions as a devastating dissection of a society poisoned by fear, distrust, and patriarchal arrogance. Description courtesy of Janus Films. (Ebrahim Golestan, Iran, 1964, 126 min., DCP, Persian with English subtitles)

Date: January 21, 2024 -  February 18, 2024

Location:

Meyer Auditorium - Freer Gallery of Art -

1100 Independence Avenue, South West

Washington, DC 20560

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