Americans who do not closely follow international news were surprised to learn on the morning of Feb. 28 that the country was, while not officially decreed so by Congress, at war with Iran. Unlike the invasion of Iraq, which featured months of buildup, this one—as with the decision to yoink Nicolás Maduro out of Venezuela—came with limited preselling. (Oh, for the days of White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, who, in 2002, uttered the notorious phrase, “From a marketing point of view, you don’t introduce new products in August.” At least those guys bothered to wonder how the U.S. public would react to a major military offensive.)
Luckily, there is a surfeit of reading one can do right here at Foreign Policy to understand the context, aims, and potential outcomes of the current conflagration. But to understand the human aspect, sometimes straight facts aren’t enough. I find there’s no better way to understand a culture, short of visiting, than immersing oneself in movies from that culture. And Iran, it just so happens, has one of the more robust film industries, and has been exporting its best work to festival and “art house” audiences for years.
Streaming media platforms make it even easier to see these films. When I was younger, the only depictions of Iran I saw were fearmongering pictures like Not Without My Daughter, in which the all-American Sally Field marries Alfred Molina (who plays an Iranian, despite being a British actor of Spanish and Italian descent), who seems like a caring father at first, but reveals himself to be a barbarian when he tricks his family into visiting Iran and then essentially holds them hostage. The film is “based on a true story” but you can watch the trailer to see how bluntly jingoistic this is. Thankfully there are other options today.
To come up with a short list of essential contemporary Iranian films is no easy task, as there are so many to choose from. This collection (and notes on where to stream them) offers a good overview from an array of directors with full resumes worthy of exploration.
I decided not to include It Was Just an Accident (currently streaming on Hulu), the 2025 Cannes Film Festival winner currently up for two Academy Awards (best international feature film and best original screenplay), even though I think it is sensational. One reason is that FP covered it recently via an in-depth interview with its director, Jafar Panahi, and the other is that it means I can list a different Panahi film that I love even more. I’m also not including Cutting Through Rocks, concerning the first elected female councilmember in a remote Iranian village, as I just included it in my rundown of this year’s Oscar-nominated documentaries. Nor am I including Secret Ballot, a 2001 road picture/drama about the struggles of inchoate democracy. (It made my mini-festival for “what to watch on election night” in 2024.)
It’s worth noting many of the filmmakers represented here have, at one point or another, found themselves scrutinized by government censors, leading to arrests and imprisonment. Panahi, for example, is currently living in exile but (before the recent war) expressed a desire to return to his homeland, despite being sentenced in absentia on charges of “propaganda activities against the system.”
Taxi
2015 | Directed by Jafar Panahi
Panahi, whose movies mix passionate humanism and dark wit, has been one of Iran’s most celebrated film directors since his debut, The White Balloon, in 1995. In 2000, he released The Circle, which criticized the treatment of women in Iranian culture, exposing how members of an oppressed sisterhood come to one another’s aid.
Presenting Iranian culture in a less-than-rosy way initiated a lifetime of trouble with censors, so much so that he was taken to Evin Prison in 2010. He was eventually released, placed under house arrest, and banned from making films. As such, he soon went to work on a little project in his own home, the title of which was This is Not A Film, and smuggled it to the Cannes Film Festival on a flash drive. (Rumors that he did so in a cake are, sadly, false.)
All of his movies since have been made in contravention of the ban (though It Was Just an Accident gives the appearance of a traditional production). My personal favorite of these underground projects is Taxi, in which the rather cuddly and good-natured director pretended to be a cab driver and rode around Tehran, recording chats with his passengers on cameras stashed inside the car.
The movie is simple: We’re hanging out with ordinary people, listening to their opinions as they talk about topics both mundane and profound. One of his early riders is someone who sells bootleg DVDs, recognizes Panahi, and is eager to talk about cinema. The best is when Panahi picks up his young niece, who is studying filmmaking in school. As she recites all the rules her teacher has handed down, we can tick off each box of why Taxi would be deemed “undistributable” by the state.
How much of this is staged? We’ll never know. (The film has no credits; most of the people in the film remain mysteries.) But for a deep soak in a community, there are few more rewarding rides than this one.
Taxi, sometimes listed as Taxi Tehran, is streaming on Kanopy for free, and for subscribers on Criterion Collection. It is also not too hard to find in high resolution on YouTube, which I normally would not mention, but since bootlegging movies to eager viewers is so core to this story, I figure it’s OK.
Taste of Cherry
1997 | Directed by Abbas Kiarostami
If you watch a lot of Iranian movies, you’ll begin to notice something: There sure are a lot of scenes set in cars. Beyond symbolic meaning, there is a practical reason for this. Censorship laws dictate several codes of conduct, like costuming, and also make it difficult to shoot men and women in interiors. But a moving automobile is inside and outside, so it is also something of a loophole.
It may also at this point be something of a self-fulfilling prophecy, as many directors, I feel, choose to shoot in cars out of respect to earlier works, like Taste of Cherry from the late master Abbas Kiarostami.
The film, the first Iranian movie to win the top prize at Cannes, is about a man named Badii driving through the countryside, picking up three different passengers, hoping one of them will aid him in his suicide. (He needs someone to bury him afterwards, you see.) Though this may sound bleak, there is a deadpan quality to it that makes it weirdly comic, or at least darkly aggravating when our hero can’t get anyone to agree.
It is certainly notable that the three encounters Badii has are with a Kurd, an Afghan, and an Azeri, an important reminder to Western audiences about the diversity of the Iranian populace. As with Taxi, the bulk of the picture is just yapping, but Taste of Cherry’s conversations are more philosophical and puzzling. The minimalist approach climaxes with a transcendent ending that I dare not spoil here.
Taste of Cherry is streaming for subscribers on HBO Max and Criterion Channel, and is rentable on other platforms.
About Elly
2009 | Directed by Asghar Farhadi
Iran has won the best international feature film Oscar twice, for the terrific A Separation and the (in my opinion) kind of blah The Salesman (which maybe I should watch again). Both were directed by Asghar Farhadi. However, neither is my favorite Farhadi film. I would first recommend About Elly, one of the most nerve-wracking psychological thrillers ever made.
The film stars the marvelous Golshifteh Farahani, whose Hollywood projects include Jim Jarmusch’s stupendous Paterson, Ridley Scott’s lousy Bible picture Exodus: Gods and Kings, and the staggeringly violent but undeniably energetic Chris Hemsworth vehicles Extraction and Extraction 2. In other words, there’s a solid chance you’d recognize her from something. She’s the organizer for a group of middle-class university pals who head to a house on the Caspian Sea for a weekend retreat. She also invites her daughter’s teacher, an enigmatic woman named Elly. There are some secrets and romantic triangles, but things quickly turn serious during a chaperoning mishap.
This is a movie that could easily be remade in any nation, but the slow burn of the conflict allows audiences unfamiliar with the culture to see how “normal” Iranian characters act in what is a fairly typical movie scenario. (If nothing else, there are the cooking scenes.) This is not a particularly political film, but in terms of getting to spend time with familiar-yet-foreign characters, it’s tough to beat.
About Elly is free to stream on Kanopy, and rentable on Apple.
Gabbeh
1996 | Directed by Mohsen Makhmalbaf
Let’s switch it up with a lush cinematic fable steeped in Persian lore that bursts off the screen in vibrant color. Gabbeh follows a young woman who spontaneously generates from a Persian rug that an old couple brings to a river to wash. (A gabbeh is, in fact, a type of traditional rug with bold geometric patterns.) The woman, who calls herself Gabbeh, proceeds to tell the tales of her nomadic people, which are woven symbolically into the carpet, and whose traditions prevent her from marrying the man she loves.
The film is awash in scenes of crafting, dyeing, and weaving against images of natural wonder, with episodes about heartache and poetry. By keeping the story of a determined young woman in the realm of folklore, Makhmalbaf was able to skirt around ideological censorship … at least until after the film’s premiere at Cannes, when it was subsequently banned in Iran as subversive.
Gabbeh is rentable on Apple and YouTube.
Persepolis
2007 | Directed by Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud
Though a U.S.-French production, Persepolis is the autobiographical coming-of-age tale of its co-director Marjane Satrapi, who based the work on her previously published graphic novels. Using (mostly) black and white hand-drawn illustrations, this touching, funny, and tragic film takes a child’s eye view to history in clever ways, always highlighting the specificity of memory.
While still a little kid, young Marji’s environment shifts drastically when the shah is deposed, which her upper-middle-class, left-wing family initially supports. The new restrictions of the Islamic revolution, however, are a shock to the system—specifically the modesty laws, which are a particular affront to a stylish young girl. Her personal indignities (like how hard it is to find Western music) are backgrounded by wider social injustices, like the difficulty in finding medical care and the arrest of dissidents. After a conflict at school, Marji’s parents send her to a French school in Vienna, where she has difficulty fitting in.
Varying between harsh realism and fantasy (such as Marji’s whimsical conversations with God), Persepolis takes full advantage of the freedom found in animation. It’s no wonder it’s the medium that Satrapi was drawn to.
Persepolis is rentable on Amazon, Apple, and other platforms.
Further Watching
As I mentioned earlier, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Here are five more recommendations. After all, it looks like this current military action isn’t going to end so quickly.
- The Seed of the Sacred Fig (2024), dir. Mohammad Rasoulof: A German production from a now-exiled director, The Seed of the Sacred Fig concerns a family torn apart when a judge enjoying the benefits of political toadying is confronted by a wife and daughters embracing the Women, Life, Freedom protests.
- The Cow (1969), dir. Dariush Mehrjui: A look at a man in a rural village whose livelihood and sense of self deteriorates when his cow goes missing. This was banned by the shah because it was felt that it dwelled too much on poverty, showing that censorship in Iranian cinema predates the Islamic Revolution.
- Sonita (2015), dir. Rokhsareh Ghaemmaghami: A lively and inspiring documentary about Sonita Alizadeh, a teen Afghan refugee in Iran who yearns to become a rap artist despite her family’s plan to sell her into marriage.
- No One Knows About Persian Cats (2009), dir. Bahman Ghobadi: A half-documentary, half-narrative about Tehran’s underground rock scene. A minimal plot about a planned trip to London is an excuse to meet a slew of outrageous and brave characters defying their government and making music.
- The Color of Paradise (1999), dir. Majid Majidi: An exploration of pure cinema centered upon a blind boy encountering nature. A lush and gorgeous experience.