Chicago
Illinois
Festival of Films from Iran 2025
Arts and Entertainment
January 13, 2025
From: Festival of Films from IranSchedule of Events
February 7, 2025
8:30 p.m: Close Up
"Neither a documentary nor a drama but a provocative, unconventional merging of the two, a meditation on perplexities of justice, social inequity, and personal identity that also subtly interrogates the processes and purposes of cinema." - Godfrey Cheshire, Criterion Collection
"The definitive film-on-film commentary." - Ed Gonzalez, Slant
"Kiarostami's film has artichoke-like layers which, once peeled, are forever resonant." - Michael Atkinson, Village Voice
Kiarostami uses real-life events as the basis for a stunning, multilayered investigation into cinema and identity. Blurring the line between documentary and fiction, CLOSE UP tells the story of Hossein Sabzian, who impersonates Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf to deceive a family into believing he is directing a movie, and that they will be the stars. As Sabzian's story unfolds, Kiarostami weaves real footage with reenactments (using the real family members as actors, now, in a poetic move, indeed in a film). A revealing mediation on the intersection of life and art, CLOSE UP is arguably Kiarostami's most revered title; and the filmmaker is arguably one our most revered: his work graces the Film Center screens on an almost-yearly basis.
Awards & Nominations
Winner - Best Film, Montreal Festival of New Cinema
Winner - FIPRESCI Prize, Istanbul Film Festival
February 8, 2025
12:00 pm: Leila
"From the first frame to the last, you feel an intimacy with Leila that is the result of flawless direction and excellent writing." - Maria Garcia, Film Journal International.
Dariush Mehrjui (1939-2023), whose 1969 film THE COW is considered the first film of the Iranian New Wave, has been celebrated at the Festival of Films from Iran throughout the years, attending in person at the 19th festival, and the 8th, with his celebrated 1998 film LEILA. Writing about the film for that year's festival, Alissa Simon wrote, "A good-looking melodrama about the problems a young upper-class couple face when the wife finds she is infertile and her husband is forced by his mother into taking a second wife. An intellectual who has always pushed the limits of acceptable subject matter, Mehrjui is among Iran's foremost makers of sophisticated, adult-centered dramas."
Awards & Nominations
Winner - Best Supporting Actress (Jamileh Sheikhi), Fajr Film Festival
Winner - Best Film, Best Director, Best Actress (Leila Hatami), Best Actor (Ali Mosaffa), Best Screenplay, Best Editing, Hafez Ceremony.
8:00 pm: Children Of Heaven
Shot in some of Tehran's poorest neighborhoods, Majid Majidi took a documentary-like approach to tell the story of brother Ali and sister Zahra who, after they lose Zahra's only pair of shoes, devise a scheme to keep the loss from their parents until they can acquire a new pair. Nominated for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film, Children Of Heaven, with its tender but never treacly performances from its child performers, uses a simple story of sibling love and sacrifice to create a world that, as Filmspotting's Josh Larsen declared, "feels as big as the universe."
Awards & Nominations
Nominee - Best International Film, Academy Awards
Winner - People's Choice Award, Montreal World Film Festival
Winner - Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Editing, Fajr Film Festival
February 9, 2025
5:30 pm: Persepolis
Set during and after the Islamic Revolution in Iran, this exuberant adaptation of Marjane Satrapi's graphic novel follows the coming- of-age story of Marjane. As she grows older, she navigates the challenges of exile, cultural conflict, and her own identity while embracing her rebellious spirit. Presented in 2017 as part of our Making ‘Em Move: A History of Animation Lecture Series, Persepolis blends humor, tragedy, and social commentary to deliver a striking portrait of the complexities of growing up.
Awards & Nominations
Nominee - Best Animated Feature, Academy Award
Winner - Jury Prize, Cannes Film Festival
Nominee - Palme d'Or, Cannes Film Festival
Winner - Palme Dog, Cannes Film Festival
Nominee - Best Animated Feature, Best Directing in an Animated Feature Production, Best Music in an Animated Feature Production, Best Writing in an Animated Feature Production, Annie Awards
February 10, 2025
5:45 pm: A Separation
"A Separation could hardly be more concrete, or contemporary, or dramatic." - Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal
"Beyond the impeccable performances and direction, it's foremost an exceptional piece of screenwriting, so finely wrought that the drama seems guided by an invisible hand" - Scott Tobias, AV Club
Presented originally at the Film Center in 2011, A Separation, which won the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film, followed a tradition of the Film Center showcasing Farhadi's work. When first presented, Barbara Scharres wrote, "A Separation is a deftly plotted drama in which small evasions and white lies yield devastating consequences when two families of differing classes clash over seemingly irreparable wrongs. A couple seeks a divorce so that she may emigrate with their young daughter, but, with the divorce denied, they separate. An escalating series of disasters grows from the husband's fateful decision to hire the wife of an unemployed shoemaker as the caregiver for his elderly Alzheimer's-stricken father."
Awards & Nominations
Winner - Best International Film, Academy Awards
Nominee - Best Original Screenplay, Academy Awards
Winner - Golden Bear, Berlin Film Festival
Winner - Silver Bear, Best Actor (Payman Maadi, Shahab Hosseini, Ali-Asghar Shahbazi, Babak Karimi), Berlin Film Festival
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8:15 pm: Manuscripts Don't Burn
"The most important moviegoing experience of the year." - Eric Cohn, Indiewire
"Demands to be seen as widely as possible." - Jonathan Romney, Screen International
When The Seed Of The Sacred Film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival last May, Mohammad Rasoulof's attendance at the screening was miraculous, as he had fled Iran to be there, after intense interrogation by Iranian authorities. An artist who has faced significant censorship, Manuscripts Don't Burn was first presented at our 25th festival, when Barbara Scharres wrote, "Laboring under a 20-year ban from filmmaking, director Rasoulof takes a dangerous step with this fictional yet fact-based political thriller steeped in darkest absurdity, as devoutly religious government thugs persecute two writers in pursuit of the galleys of a damning book."
Awards & Nominations
Winner - FIPRESCI Prize, Cannes Film Festival
Nominee - Un Certain Regard Award, Cannes Film Festival
Winner - Political Film Award, Hamburg Film Festival
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February 11, 2025
6:15 pm: A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night
"Defies genre." - Kamelya Youssef
"Amirpour combines elements of film noir and the restraint of Iranian New Wave cinema with the subdued depictions of a bored youth culture found in early Jim Jarmusch the comparisons go on and on, but the result is wholly original." - Eric Kohn, Indiewire.
Fortuitously, though Ana Lily Amirpour's hit feature debut was not presented during our 25th Festival of Films from Iran in February 2015, it had played the month prior, and was so popular that it was brought back to the Film Center for an encore run during the festival. Writing about the film, Barbara Scharres wrote, "Iranian American director Amirpour emerges as a full-blown auteur in this spookily sumptuous vampire tale set in a dusty ghost town crawling with low-life losers who just happen to speak Persian. James Dean- styled hunk Arash has a cat for a sidekick and the hottest wheels in town until the drug dealer takes the keys. The Girl, a nocturnal specter in a long black chador, considers her options. Love bites."
Awards & Nominations
Winner - Breakthrough Director Award, Gotham Awards
Nominee - Audience Award, Gotham Awards
Nominee - Best First Feature, Film Independent Spirit Awards
Nominee - Audience Award, Sundance Film Festival
8:30 pm: Taxi
"An act of defiance that's also a sublime piece of cinema, and it ranks among the director's finest work." - Sheri Linden, Los Angeles Times
"Subtle, humorous and humane." - Peter Bradshaw, Guardian
One of the most popular films presented at the Film Center in 2015 (released outside of the Festival of Films from Iran timing, but in the spirit of the festival), TAXI, like Jafar Panahi's THIS IS NOT A FILM (2011) and NO BEARS (2022), has smacked against but never crumbled under a repressive regime’s efforts of suppression. The resourceful director, still laboring under a 20-year ban on filmmaking, mounted surveillance cameras on the dashboard of a taxi of which he is the driver. Blurring the line between fact and fiction, Panahi picks up a series of passengers, all of whom have a universe of opinions and perspectives on life in Tehran.
Awards & Nominations
Winner - Golden Bear, Berlin Film Festival
Winner - FIPRESCI Prize, Berlin Film Festival
February 12, 2025
8:30 pm: Starless Dreams
"Roger Ebert once called the movies 'a machine that generates empathy,' and Starless Dreams is just such a machine. With the conceptual rigor and emotional directness associated with the best of Iranian cinema, Oskouei simply listens to the stories of those who have never been listened to before." - Scott Tobias, Variety
"Mehrdad Oskouei's reputation as one of Iran's finest documentary filmmakers grows film by film. Starless Dreams is the perfect example of how powerful simplicity can be, when it's underpinned by compassion for its subject." - Deborah Young, The Hollywood Reporter
In this empathetic documentary set in a juvenile detention center for teenage girls on the outskirts of Tehran, Mehrdad Oskouei (THE OTHER SIDE OF THE BURKA, presented at the Film Center in 2006) follows seven inmates, all of whom have committed serious crimes, from robbery to homicide and drug possession. Through interviews and observational footage, Oskouei documents her subjects as they reflect on their crimes and share their hopes for the future. Despite the harshness of their surroundings—and the dangers outside the prison walls— the film captures the joys they experience together as young women. Oskouei, one of Iran's most prominent filmmakers, spent seven years securing access to the facility, and delivers an unforgettable portrayal of innocence lost and found.
Awards & Nominations
Winner - Amnesty International Film Prize, Berlin Film Festival
Winner - Grierson Award, Documentary, London Film Festival
Winner - Best Directing in a Documentary Film, Fajr Film Festival
February 13, 2025
8:30 pm: Hit The Road
"Infused with warmth and humanity, this is a triumph." - Wendy Ide, Screen International
"Damned near to being a masterpiece – if it isn't simply one already." - John Bleasdale, Cinevue
We close this year's festival with a title new to our screens, as HIT THE ROAD received a small theatrical release in 2021, when theaters were still recovering from the pandemic (and our Festival of Films from Iran did not return until 2023). In Panah Panahi's (son of Jafar Panahi) charming, sharp-witted road-trip movie, a family of four—two middle-aged parents, their grown son, and their energetic six-year-old—drive across the Iranian countryside. On the drive they bond and bicker about the past, about their fears for the future, and over their dog. When the purpose of their journey is revealed, it hits you with an emotional wallop.
Awards & Nominations
Nominee - Golden Camera, Cannes Film Festival
Winner - Best Film, London Film Festival
Date:
February 7-13, 2025
Location:
Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 North State Street
Chicago, IL 60601