On December 5, the Cannes Film Festival opened its registration platform for films applying for the 2023 edition. Last year, out of the 2 200 candidate feature films, 67 came from Iran or the diaspora. Sixty-seven is not much. But it’s also a lot. If Iran is one of the “little ones” country for festivals and international distributors, the echo of this cinema is, by far, more important than others, coming from Japan, Italy or Great Britain. Critics and spectators, especially French, are interested in it, and the competitions reward it.
Since the Palme d’Or awarded to cherry taste, by Abbas Kiarostami, in 1997, films have regularly appeared in the European charts: Golden Lion in Venice for The circle, by Jafar Panahi, in 2000; Golden Bear in Berlin for Taxi Tehran, by the same director, in 2015; Golden Bear also awarded in 2011 to A separation, by Asghar Farhadi…
A logical success in view of the history of the seventh art in this country. Before the Islamic revolution of 1979, despite the existence of strong censorship under the Shah’s regime, Iranian cinema succeeded in presenting varied works addressing all genres and all types of story, from documentary to fiction. Everything changed with the advent of the Islamic Republic, when the new power decided to make cinema an ideological vector and to gag all other forms of art.
Western foreign films were banned and authorized feature films carried the Islamic faith high, criticized the old regime and glorified the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988). Today, the official production, important but corseted by the power, is limited to family comedies and dramas for the general public. So much so that the only Iranian cinema known outside the borders is represented by independent films. Social, critical, inventive works. A window, for the foreign public, on this little-known country.
The dubbing of major festivals
France is undoubtedly one of this cinema’s best friends. All these films find a particular echo in France. Between 1996 and 2021, 80 feature films were released on screens (according to the National Cinema Center, CNC). Here too, Iran is doing better than most “little ones” countries, and admissions to theaters are by far higher than those of Brazilian, Egyptian, Dutch or Hong Kong productions. Moreover, 2022 is almost a record year, with six films on display, including Leila and her brothers (120,000 admissions for this film by Saeed Roustaee, who recorded 150,000 with Tehran Law, in 2021), and Nights of Mashhad, by Ali Abbasi (100,000 entries).
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