Trends in Iranian Cinema: Local and Global Perspectives

The cinema of Iran is celebrated both locally and internationally, yet elements of this diverse field remain comparatively understudied. This book brings together a diverse range of scholars to explore contemporary Iranian cinema in its local and international contexts from a range of perspectives including aesthetic, socio-political comparative approaches. Its chapters analyse the work of well-known filmmakers on the international film circuit such as Abbas Kiarostami, Mohammad Reza Aslani and Jaffar Panahi, as well as internationally lesser-known domestic films such as those of Kamal Tabrizi and the ’Sacred Defence’ films of the Iran-Iraq war. The book further widens its scope with chapters which also examine the material practices of the Iranian film industry itself, including chapters on the process by which Iranian films become ’accessible’ to international audience. Finally, it considers, too, representations of Iranians in foreign cinemas, and how these have in turn affected Iranian films.

Behrooz Mahmoodi-Bakhtiari is Associate Professor of linguistics and Persian at the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Tehran, Iran. He is the author of Tense in Persian (2002), and a co-author of Faarsi Biyaamuzim (2001) and Persian for Dummies (2017). He is also the co-editor of Essays on Typology of Iranian Languages (2019).

Mohammad Rahmati holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Tehran in 2018. He has published articles in the Sociological Review (University of Tehran) and the Quarterly Journal of Social Sciences (Allameh Tabatabaei University), and has taught at a number of Iranian universities.