London Film Festival Features Trump Biopic by Abbasi, Rasoulof’s New Movie
By Ahmad Rafat
The BFI London Film Festival, which ran from Oct. 8 to Oct. 20, showcased the work of Iranian directors and actors from Iran and the diaspora, with two movies receiving particular attention: ...
Shirin Neshat Talks About Her Latest Film: A Tribute to Oum Kulthum
By Ahmad Rafat
Shirin Neshat – the Iranian visual artist and filmmaker who won the Silver Lion award for best director at the 2009 Venice International Film Festival for "Women Without Men" – was in...
Video Game Revisits 1953 Overthrow of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh
By Julie Ershadi
Kurosh ValaNejad was born in Iran in 1966 to an Iranian father and an American mother. He and his older brother Cyrus grew up there until shortly before the 1979 Revolution, when...
Iranian Directors In the Spotlight at London Film Festival
A documentary shot by an Iranian asylum seeker in a detention camp was among several Iranian films screened at this year's London Film Festival, which drew some 200,000 moviegoers to an array of cinemas...
Iranian Filmmakers, Actresses Defy Regime In Aftermath of Protests
By Ahmad Rafat and Firouzeh Nordstrom
Since the start of the ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ movement in 2022, Iranian cinema has entered a new phase unparalleled in the past four and a half decades. Independent filmmakers...
Growing Up With Gender Identity Disorder in Iran: Interview with Pooya Mohseni
By Fred Parvaneh
Mohseni is an Iranian-American actor, writer, and activist. A graduate of New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology and the Maggie Flanigan Studio, Pooya has had a string of lead, supporting and recurring...
Two Berlin Festival Films Relive Torture in Iranian Prisons
By James Imam
BERLIN Feb 21 (Reuters) - In “Where God is Not”, Iranian filmmaker Mehran Tamadon´s unflinching account of the torture of former political prisoners in Iran, the director asks his interviewees to relive the horrors of their...
Another Oscar for Iran? Farhadi’s ‘Salesman’ Is Nominated, But He’ll Skip the Awards
Asghar Farhadi became the first Iranian in history to win an Oscar: for his drama "A Separation," which took the prize for Best Foreign Language Film in 2012. He may win another Oscar this...
Iranian-American Filmmaker Wins Oscar for Menstruation Movie
By Tara Biglari
Filmmaker Rayka Zehtabchi made history this week as the first Iranian-American ever to win an Oscar. Her film ‘Period. End of Sentence’ — about the stigma around menstruation in parts of the...
Hollywood Filmmaker Ana Lily Amirpour Discusses Her New Movie, Iranian Roots
By Laura van Straaten
Hours before opening weekend for her much-anticipated movie “The Bad Batch,” the
Iranian-American screenwriter and director Ana Lily Amirpour sat down for an interview with Kayhan Life to discuss her quick rise...














