28th Annual Festival of Films from Iran

Co-presented with the Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art

Co-organized by Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art, 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.

Schedule:

February 6, 2024

Imagine (2022) - 07:10 Pm

Ali Behrad's debut feature boasts a powerhouse performance from Leila Hatami (A SEPARATION). She plays a beguiling woman who hops into a cab driven by a hopeless romantic (Mehrdad Sedighian) and claims to have just scattered the ashes of her murdered brother — just one of many tales she will tell him over the course of multiple nighttime rides through the city, each time seeming to take on a different persona. Despite making it clear that she is out of his league, their by turns mysterious and playful encounters add up to a dreamy Tehran nocturne made under the spell of the likes of Wong Kar Wai and Richard Linklater. (Note adapted from National Museum of Asian Art.) DIR/SCR Ali Behrad; PROD Javad Noruzbegi. Iran, 2022, color, 78 min. In English and Persian with English subtitles.

February 11, 2024

Terrestrial Verses - 06:30 Pm

In this boldly galvanizing film, co-directors Ali Asgari and Alireza Khatami confront the oppression and conformity of the Iranian government via a tapestry of vignettes. Throughout progressively frustrating situations, we witness how the people of Iran are restricted in their freedoms of choice and expression in the most innocuous of situations, the absurdity of which increases with each segment. Those in control are deftly positioned offscreen, and those without it are confined to the frame in forced symmetry. With wry humor, Asgari and Khatami perfectly center (literally and figuratively) the constraints average Iranians face daily, as well as, paradoxically, the pains of making an acceptable film by government standards. With a startling final act, the filmmakers imagine a radically new Tehran that breaks free from the old regime. (Note courtesy of AFI FEST.) DIR/SCR/PROD Ali Asgari; DIR/SCR Alireza Khatami; PROD Milad Khoravi. Iran, 2023, color, 77 min. In Persian with English subtitles.

February 15, 2024

Terrestrial Verses -09:10 Pm

In this boldly galvanizing film, co-directors Ali Asgari and Alireza Khatami confront the oppression and conformity of the Iranian government via a tapestry of vignettes. Throughout progressively frustrating situations, we witness how the people of Iran are restricted in their freedoms of choice and expression in the most innocuous of situations, the absurdity of which increases with each segment. Those in control are deftly positioned offscreen, and those without it are confined to the frame in forced symmetry. With wry humor, Asgari and Khatami perfectly center (literally and figuratively) the constraints average Iranians face daily, as well as, paradoxically, the pains of making an acceptable film by government standards. With a startling final act, the filmmakers imagine a radically new Tehran that breaks free from the old regime. (Note courtesy of AFI FEST.) DIR/SCR/PROD Ali Asgari; DIR/SCR Alireza Khatami; PROD Milad Khoravi. Iran, 2023, color, 77 min. In Persian with English subtitles.

February 20, 2024

Roxana (2023) - 07:00 Pm

ROXANA (2023)

The latest film from Parviz Shahbazi (TRAPPED, TRAVELER FROM THE SOUTH) delves into the world of Iranian's wayward younger generation. The main character, a 23-year-old named Fred, barely leaves the house, and anytime he does, it is mainly to gamble at a seedy pool hall. When he meets Roxana, a charismatic, seemingly carefree artist with a thriving photography business, it looks as if his life is about to change. But a road trip to the coast with her will teach him how quickly fortune can change in Iran's strict society. (Note adapted from National Museum of Asian Art.) DIR/SCR Parviz Shahbazi; PROD Masoud Radaei. Iran, 2023, color, 130 min. In Persian with English subtitles.

February 26 - 27, 2024

Brick And Mirror - 07:00 Pm

With this landmark debut feature, the late Iranian 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. (Note courtesy of Janus Films.) DIR/SCR/PROD Ebrahim Golestan. Iran, 1964, b&w, 126 min. In Persian with English subtitles.

March 4 And 6, 2024

Winners (2022) - 06:45 Pm

Directed by British Iranian filmmaker Hassan Nazer, the UK'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–U.S. 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, and featuring 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," per Anna Smith in Deadline. (Note adapted from National Museum of Asian Art.) DIR/SCR Hassan Nazer; SCR Hamed Emami; PROD Nadira Murray, Paul Welsh. UK, 2022, color, 85 min. In Persian with English subtitles.

Date: February 6, 2024 - March 6, 2024

Location:

AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center -

8633 Colesville Road

Silver Spring, MD 20910

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