Here's your chance to see some of the best Iranian and diasporic films of 2024 on the big screen. The selection ranges widely, from political thrillers to deadpan comedy. We've co-organized this festival with the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The festival is cosponsored by the Ilex Foundation.

Schedule of Events

January 24, 2025

7:00 pm - 8:30 pm: Universal Language

This deadpan comedy takes place in an alternate reality in Winnipeg, Canada, where Persian and French are the official languages and street signs bear Perso-Arabic script. The eccentric, interlocking narratives burst at the seams with references to classic Iranian cinema of the '80s and '90s. Two schoolkids attempt to dislodge a 500 rial bill frozen in a block of ice (a plot straight out of Jafar Panahi’s The White Balloon). A teacher scolds his students in Persian and French (à la Abbas Kiarostami’s Where Is the Friend’s House?). An impassioned tour guide berates his bewildered charges into appreciating the “charms” of notoriously cold, beige, and boring Winnipeg.

Universal Language won the inaugural Directors’ Fortnight Audience Award at the Cannes Film Festival and is Canada’s official Academy Awards entry. Of the film, Jordan Mintzer (The Hollywood Reporter) writes, “In his own very weird way [Rankin] manages to . . . turn an everyday place into something momentarily special—which is what all good movies are meant to do.”

(Dir: Matthew Rankin, Canada, 2024, 89 min., DCP, Persian and French with English subtitles)

January 26, 2025

2:00 pm - 5:00 pm: The Seed of the Sacred Fig

This political thriller and drama was filmed in secret before its director, Mohammad Rasoulof (There Is No Evil, Manuscripts Don’t Burn), fled Iran in exile. The Seed of the Sacred Fig portrays the ways authoritarian power infects and corrupts the psyche—much like the titular fig, which is a parasite that eventually takes over its host plant.

Honest and devout lawyer Iman is appointed as an investigating judge. At first, he struggles with moral qualms about the pressure he faces to deal out death sentences. Then, the Women, Life, Freedom protests erupt in the streets. His mind begins to change, and he becomes paranoid to the point of distrusting his own wife and daughters.

Rasoulof is a passionately political filmmaker who has spent time in prison for his outspokenness. His final film in Iran is perhaps his most damning statement about the Iranian regime.

(Dir.: Mohammad Rasoulof, Iran/Germany/France, 2024, 168 min., DCP, Persian with English subtitles)

February 7, 2025

7:00 pm - 8:30 pm: 6 in the Morning

6 in the Morning is essentially two films: The first half is the bittersweet story of a young Iranian woman leaving friends and family for a new life overseas. The second is a nail-biting, edge-of-your-seat thriller.

Sara is due at the airport at 6 a.m. to fly to Canada to study for her doctorate. She attends a late-night goodbye party thrown by her friends, planning to go directly to the airport afterwards. There is drinking, dancing, unrelated men and women mingling—all illegal acts in Iran. Then the morality police show up. Sara’s friends are arrested after hiding her in their apartment, which is now locked and sealed with police tape. Will she escape and begin her new life, or will her bright future come to a sudden end?

(Dir.: Mehran Modiri, Iran, 2024, 88 min., DCP, Persian with English subtitles)

February 9, 2025

2:00 pm - 3:45 pm: My Favourite Cake

In this poignant comedy-drama, a lonely seventy-year-old widow decides to pursue joy and love. Mahin (Lili Farhadpour) spends her days mostly alone, except for occasional visits with friends to discuss their various ailments, and video chats with her distracted daughter overseas. Determined to revive her love life, she meets Faramaz (Esmaeel Mehrabi), a lonesome cab driver about her age, by chance. She engineers a night to remember, full of drinking, dancing, and the affection they both crave.

The plot may seem innocuous, but the directors’ passports were revoked, preventing them from attending the film’s premiere in Berlin. This travel ban is presumed to be related to the film's scenes of drinking, Mahin’s uncovered hair, and berating a morality police officer into releasing a young woman.

(Dir.: Maryam Moghaddam & Behtash Sanaeeha, Iran/France/Sweden/Germany, 2024, 97 min., DCP, Persian with English subtitles)

February 21, 2025

7:00 pm-8:30 pm: My Stolen Planet

Part found footage documentary, part personal diary, Farahnaz Sharifi’s film traces the recent history of women’s lives in Iran. Footage collected in secret shows joyous, prerevolution—and now illegal-gatherings. Film and photography highlight the heroism of the Women, Life, Freedom movement. And Sharifi shares her personal sorrow as her mother succumbs to Alzheimer’s. In the end, the danger she’s put herself in by working on the film itself inspires her to make a life-changing decision.

According to Sharifi, the title of her film came “from the dual life we lead in Iran: There’s their planet and then there’s our planet.” Amber Wilkinson (Screen Daily) calls My Stolen Planet “an intimate celebration of everyday resistance in modern Iran [that shows] how the very act of filming becomes an act of resistance.”

(Dir.: Farahnaz Sharifi, Germany/Iran, 2024, 82 min., DCP, Persian with English subtitles)

February 23, 2025

2:00 pm - 5:00 pm: The Stranger and the Fog

Legendary Iranian New Wave director Bahram Beyzaie’s sophomore feature possesses both the epic dimensions of myth and the hallucinatory atmosphere of a dream.

Set around the northern coast of Iran, The Stranger and the Fog begins with a boat drifting onto the shore of a small village. The beautiful Rana (Parvaneh Massoumi) hopes the stray vessel has brought back her husband, who disappeared a year ago out on the sea. But the only passenger is Ayat (Khosrow Shojazadeh), a wounded stranger with no memory of how he ended up in this land. After gradually proving himself as a member of the community, Ayat upsets the locals by marrying Rana, and then grows increasingly paranoid about intermittently glimpsed figures that vow to avenge his misdeeds from a forgotten past.

Description courtesy of Janus Films. Restored by The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project and Cineteca di Bologna in collaboration with Bahram Beyzaie. Funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation.

(Dir.: Bahram Beyzaie, Iran, 1974, 146 min., DCP, Persian with English subtitles)

Date:
January 24-February 23, 2025

Hours:
January 24, 2025 from 7:00pm to 8:30pm
January 26, 2025 from 2:00pm to 5:00pm
February 7, 2025 from 7:00pm to 8:30pm
February 9, 2025 from 2:00pm to 3:45pm
February 21, 2025 from 7:00pm to 8:30pm
February 23, 2025 from 2:00pm to 5:00pm

Location:
Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art , 1050 Independence Ave SW, Washington, DC 20560

Freer Gallery of Art
Meyer Auditorium

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