Iranian Cinema after 1979

After the 1979 revolution, Iranian cinema went through near-collapse, strict Islamic regulation and then an unexpected flowering. From the late 1980s directors such as Abbas Kiarostami, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Jafar Panahi and later Asghar Farhadi won the world’s leading festival prizes and two Academy Awards, with films often about children, ordinary families and moral dilemmas. Throughout, filmmakers have worked under censorship, and several of the best known have been banned, imprisoned or driven into exile.

Revolution and the burning of cinemas

For many revolutionaries in 1978, cinemas stood for Western influence and moral corruption, and dozens were set on fire during the uprising, the deadliest case being the Cinema Rex fire in Abadan in August 1978. Khomeini, however, said on his return in February 1979 that he was not opposed to cinema itself, only to its misuse, and the new state set out to create an “Islamic” cinema rather than abolish film. The commercial filmfarsi industry of musicals and melodramas described in Iranian cinema before 1979 disappeared, and many stars left the country or were barred from the screen.

Rules for an Islamic screen

In the early 1980s the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, under minister Mohammad Khatami from 1982, and the Farabi Cinema Foundation, set up in 1983, built a system of state funding, script approval and screening permits. Its rules shaped the look of Iranian films. Women had to wear the hijab on screen even in scenes set at home, where in real life they would not; men and women could not touch; music and dance were tightly limited. Directors learned to work around the rules: one result was the prominence of children as central characters, since stories about children avoided many restrictions on adult relationships. Another was a style of long takes, real locations and non-professional actors that critics compared to Italian neorealism.

The new wave reaches the world

Abbas Kiarostami (1940–2016) had made films since 1970 at the Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults (Kanun). Where Is the Friend’s House? (1987), about a boy trying to return a schoolmate’s notebook, began his Koker trilogy; its sequel And Life Goes On (1992) follows a director searching for his young actors after the 1990 earthquake. Close-Up (1990) restaged the true story of a man who impersonated the director Mohsen Makhmalbaf. In 1997 Taste of Cherry, about a man seeking someone to bury him after his suicide, shared the Palme d’Or at Cannes; it had at first been held back by Iranian censors.

Mohsen Makhmalbaf, a former Islamist militant jailed under the Shah, turned from religious films to searching social dramas such as The Cyclist (1987) and the lyrical Gabbeh (1996). Bahram Beyzai’s Bashu, the Little Stranger (made in 1986), about a boy from the war-torn south taken in by a woman in Gilan, is often named the finest Iranian film of the decade. Majid Majidi’s Children of Heaven (1997), about a brother and sister sharing one pair of shoes, became the first Iranian film nominated for an Oscar.

Women directors and the reform years

The reform era of President Khatami (1997–2005) brought a looser climate. Rakhshan Bani-Etemad, sometimes called the first lady of Iranian cinema, made The May Lady (1998) and Under the Skin of the City (2001); Tahmineh Milani’s Two Women (1999) addressed the limits placed on educated women, and Samira Makhmalbaf made The Apple at 17. Jafar Panahi, a former assistant to Kiarostami, won the Caméra d’Or at Cannes for The White Balloon (1995) and the Golden Lion at Venice for The Circle (2000), a portrait of women in Tehran that was banned at home. More context is in Khatami and the reform era.

Farhadi and international success

Asghar Farhadi’s tightly plotted family dramas brought Iranian cinema its widest audience. About Elly (2009) won the Silver Bear in Berlin; A Separation (2011), about a couple divorcing and a dispute with their housekeeper, won the Golden Bear and in 2012 the first Oscar for an Iranian film. The Salesman (2016) won a second Oscar in 2017; Farhadi stayed away from the ceremony in protest at the US travel ban on Iranians. Domestic audiences, meanwhile, filled cinemas for comedies, social melodramas and “Sacred Defence” films about the Iran–Iraq War, such as those of Ebrahim Hatamikia.

Bans, prison and exile

After the 2009 election protests, Panahi was arrested and in 2010 sentenced to six years in prison and a twenty-year ban on making films. He kept working in secret: This Is Not a Film (2011) was smuggled out of Iran, reportedly on a USB drive hidden in a cake, and Taxi (2015) won the Golden Bear. Mohammad Rasoulof won the Golden Bear for There Is No Evil (2020), about the death penalty; in 2024 he was sentenced to eight years in prison and flogging, fled to Germany, and presented The Seed of the Sacred Fig at Cannes, where it won a special jury prize. Panahi was jailed again in 2022 and released in 2023 after a hunger strike; his It Was Just an Accident, about former prisoners who think they have found their torturer, won the Palme d’Or in May 2025.

Actors have faced pressure too. Golshifteh Farahani left Iran after appearing unveiled in a Hollywood film in 2008; Zar Amir Ebrahimi, who had fled after a private video was leaked, won best actress at Cannes in 2022; and Taraneh Alidoosti, star of The Salesman, was detained in December 2022 after supporting the Woman, Life, Freedom protests. Inside Iran, streaming platforms and home-video series have grown alongside cinemas, and many films are now made abroad by Iranian directors in exile.