Twenty-Seventh Annual Festival of Films from Iran

Films are shown in the 300-seat Meyer Auditorium. Free tickets (up to four per person per film) can be reserved using the links below. Patrons may also register at the door if seats are still available.?Patrons with advance tickets must arrive 5 minutes before show time to guarantee admission.

Schedule of Events

January 20, 2023

7 pm - The Apple Day

As part of an alphabet-learning exercise, young Mahdi's first-grade teacher asks him to bring in apples for all his classmates, which should be easy because his father is an apple-selling street vendor. But as the date approaches, the van Mahdi's father uses to sell apples is stolen, throwing the family into economic uncertainty. Mahdi, meanwhile, is determined to gather up enough apples for his class any way he can. A stylistic throwback to the neorealist Iranian cinema that captured the world's attention in the 1990s, The Apple Day is a deceptively simple story with layers of meaning underneath. (Dir.: Mahmoud Ghaffari, Iran, 2022, 97 min., DCP, Persian and Azerbaijani with English subtitles)

January 22, 2023

2 pm - Destiny

This moving documentary tells the story of Sahar, a teenager who recently lost her mother to cancer, and now has to take care of her father, a man with special needs. While a local cleric tries to arrange a second marriage for her father, Sahar has to balance her need to care for her father and her dream to attend college. Yaser Talebi's film brings to light the social pressures young women in Iran face every day. (Dir.: Yaser Talebi, Iran, 2022, 72 min., DCP, Persian with English subtitles)

January 29, 2023

2 pm - Chess of the Wind

Restored by the Film Foundation's World Cinema Project

Screened publicly just once before it was banned and then lost for decades, this rediscovered jewel of Iranian cinema reemerges to take its place as one of the most singular and astonishing works of the country's pre-revolution New Wave. A hypnotically stylized murder mystery awash in shivery period atmosphere, Chess of the Wind unfolds in an ornate, candlelit mansion where a web of greed, violence, and betrayal ensnares the heirs to a family fortune as they vie for control of their recently deceased matriarch's estate. Melding the influences of European modernism, gothic horror, and classical Persian art, director Mohammad Reza Aslani crafts an exquisitely controlled mood piece that erupts in a stunningly subversive final act in which class conventions, gender roles, and even time itself are upended with shocking ferocity. It features Shohreh Aghdashloo (The Expanse) in her first acting role. Description adapted from Janus Films. (Dir.: Mohammad Reza Aslani, Iran, 1976, 98 min., DCP, Persian with English subtitles)

February 3, 2023

7 pm - No Bears

We dedicate this weekend's screenings to Jafar Panahi, who was jailed in July and sentenced to six years in prison. Though banned by the Iranian government from making films or leaving the country since 2010, Panahi has defiantly continued to shoot films in secret and smuggle them out into the world. In No Bears, he plays himself, directing a film by videoconference in Turkey from a remote Iranian village just across the border. The parallel narratives of the film Panahi is making—on the one hand, a story about two refugees trying to enter Europe, and on the other, the drama in the village around two romantic rivals who seek advice from Panahi, echo and intertwine in fascinating and sometimes humorous ways. "Panahi keeps pulling the narrative rug out from under the viewer as he confronts tradition and progress, city and country, spiritual belief and photographic evidence, and the human desire to escape from oppression." (New York Film Festival) (Dir.: Jafar Panahi, Iran, 2022, 106 min., DCP, Persian, Azerbaijani and Turkish with English subtitles)

February 5, 2023

2 pm - Offside

In Iran, women are forbidden from attending soccer games. Inspired by a time when his own daughter was refused entry to a game, Jafar Panahi made this buoyant, crowd-pleasing movie about a group of young women who disguise themselves as men so they can watch the Iranian national team play a World Cup qualifying match. When they are caught and placed in a holding cell from which they can hear the game, they try every way possible to cajole the troops guarding them into letting them see the game. The rebellious spirit of the characters in Offside still fuels the fight for women's rights in Iran, as evidenced by the "Women, Life, Freedom" protests that began last year. (Dir.: Jafar Panahi, Iran, 2006, 88 min., 35mm, Persian with English subtitles)

February 10, 2023

7 pm - The Runner

In this "gem of the Iranian new wave" (J. Hoberman, New York Times), Amiro is an illiterate eleven-year-old orphan living alone in an abandoned tanker in the Iranian port city of Abadan. He survives by shining shoes, selling water, and diving for deposit bottles, while being bullied by both adults and competing older kids. But he finds solace by dreaming about departing cargo ships and airplanes and by running...seemingly to nowhere. Gorgeously restored with improved subtitles, you can finally see this "work of astonishing power and simplicity" (Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times) as it was meant to be seen. Description adapted from Rialto Pictures. (Dir.: Amir Naderi, Iran, 1984, 91 min., DCP, Persian with English subtitles)

February 12, 2023

2 pm - Manuscripts Don't Burn

Made in defiance of a twenty-year ban on filmmaking, this incendiary thriller by Mohammad Rasoulof was inspired by the Iranian government's attempt to murder several prominent writers and intellectuals in 1995. Eschewing the metaphorical approach to subversive material that many Iranian filmmakers deploy, Rasoulof (Iron Island, A Man of Integrity) delivers a bold indictment of Iran's brutal and secretive security apparatus. At the same time, he brilliantly highlights the moral toll this system takes on both the victimized and the complicit. So dangerous was this project that Rasoulof's name is the only one to appear in the credits. Manuscripts Don't Burn is "harrowing, defiant, and exemplifying through its very existence the moral courage its totalitarian villains stamp down," raves the Village Voice. "The film, while wrenching and audacious, is crafted with that humane and observational mastery of great Iranian cinema of recent decades." Rasoulof was arrested in July for social media posts critical of the Iranian security force. Godfrey Cheshire, who writes about this film in his new book Conversations with Kiarostami, will introduce the film. (Dir: Mohammad Rasoulof, Iran, 2013, 125 min., mp4, Persian with English subtitles)

Date: January 20-February 12, 2023

Cost: Free

Location:
Meyer Auditorium - Freer Gallery of Art,
1100 Independence Avenue, South West,
Washington, DC 20013.

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