The riddle of Iranian cinema
The Documentary Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 29 May 2025
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Iranian-American film-maker Maryam Keshavarz explores a world of creativity under restriction, where film-makers find ways to speak despite censorship. Born in New York City to Iranian parents, Maryam grew up moving between two cultures, smuggling pop culture into Iran for her cousins. That early experience - bridging the gap between freedom and limitation - shaped her storytelling and her understanding of identity. Maryam speaks to Amarali Navaee, an Iranian film-maker now living in Turkey, who shares how exile reshapes creativity; Ehsan Khoshbakht, a film historian and critic, who traces the legacy of Iranian cinema; Hossein Molayemi and Shirin Sohani, Oscar-winning Iranian animators, who discuss how animation bypasses restrictions; and Panah Panahi, an Iranian film-maker still working in Iran, who offers a rare glimpse into film-making under constant surveillance.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Iranian cinema is celebrated worldwide, rich, poetic, visually stunning. |
| 0:10.7 | We are raised in a storytelling culture. |
| 0:13.7 | Our grandmothers, our mothers, our fathers. |
| 0:16.5 | I was raised during Iran-Iraq War. |
| 0:19.4 | So even the sirens, even the bombs, they all had stories |
| 0:24.5 | behind it so that the children don't get traumatized. But behind the artistry, filmmakers work under |
| 0:30.4 | restrictions that shape every frame. You can have two different people watch these films and |
| 0:35.4 | arrive at completely different conclusions, because |
| 0:37.8 | the messaging is really hidden. They can't overtly tell the story that they want to tell or say |
| 0:43.5 | what they want to say. And despite worldwide censorship, Iranian filmmakers craft some of the |
| 0:48.1 | most daring and powerful films in the world. Restriction and limitation make filmmaking thrive. I believe they give it an |
| 0:56.8 | oomph. This is the documentary, The Rital of Iranian Cinema, from the BBC World Service. |
| 1:06.3 | Hi, I'm Mariam Keshavar, is a filmmaker and storyteller. |
| 1:15.6 | Born in New York, but shaped by Iran. |
| 1:18.5 | On the morning of September 11, 2001, my world changed. |
| 1:25.3 | Good evening. |
| 1:26.2 | The world has never before seen terrorism on the scale America experienced today. |
| 1:32.4 | The World Trade Center had been struck by one hijacked. |
| 1:35.2 | I was in San Francisco, waking up three hours behind, completely unaware that everything had already shifted. |
| 1:41.3 | My brothers were working directly in front of the towers. The news, the fear, the |
| 1:46.4 | rhetoric. I realized then how dangerous broad-stroke narratives could be, how a single event could |
| 1:53.1 | erase nuance. That wake-up call is what drove me into filmmaking. But even before that moment, |
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