Ty Burr, a former film critic for The Boston Globe, writes the movie recommendation newsletter Ty Burr’s Watch List.
Iran has been a bogeyman in American politics and culture for decades, yet many Americans know little about the people who live there. They’re real people, with husbands, wives, kids, culture, one of the oldest civilizations in human history, and a government that was well on its way to independent democracy until the United States helped engineer a coup to overthrow the elected prime minister in 1953. (Pop quiz: Who’s ultimately responsible for the Islamic Revolution of 1979? Americans are.)
Sadly, if you asked the average American what the average Iranian is like, the prevailing sentiment might echo that old 9/11-era country song whose lyrics went “I watch CNN but I’m not sure I can tell you/The diff’rence in Iraq and Iran.”
What is the difference? Well, the languages, for one thing (Iranians speak Farsi, or Persian). And the arts in Iran have long reflected a sophisticated, cosmopolitan populace that has struggled to express itself in the nearly half century since the revolution. Iranian film in particular has been one of the glories of world cinema since the 1990s, and the roll call of great directors includes Abbas Kiarostami, Jafar Panahi, Asghar Farhadi, and many more.
On the assumption that we should understand who we’re bombing, here are five excellent Iranian movies, all streaming now (or available at your library) and almost all illustrating the Kafkaesque contortions of life in a country where there’s no separation between church and state. (Ahem.) Watch these films and know thine enemy — and maybe find out that they’re not our enemy after all.
“It Was Just an Accident” (2025): Winner of the top prize at last year’s Cannes Film Festival and up for two Oscars this year (international film and original screenplay), Panahi’s gripping black comedy follows a group of former political prisoners — people who just happened to have said the wrong thing at the wrong time — as they try to decide whether the man one of them has kidnapped is their unseen torturer. The script was inspired by the director’s own time in Evin Prison for “propaganda activities.” Early Panahi masterpieces “The Circle” (2000) and “Crimson Gold” (2003) are also well worth seeing. (Hulu, Prime Video, Apple TV, YouTube, Fandango at Home, and Plex.)
“A Separation” (2011): The first Iranian film to win the Oscar for best international film concerns an upper-middle-class Tehran couple, their daughter, and the woman they hire to look after the husband’s ailing grandfather. Farhadi’s drama builds inexorably to a court case that lays bare the moral, social, and psychological complexities of life in modern Iran. Next stop: Farhadi’s second Oscar winner, “A Salesman” (2016), and 2021’s blistering “A Hero.” (Prime Video, Apple TV, YouTube, Fandango at Home, and Spectrum.)
“No One Knows About Persian Cats” (2009): A small, wonderful film about Iranian rock and rollers. A boyfriend-and-girlfriend folk-pop duo scurry around the city trying to get visas to play a gig in London, in the process meeting hustlers, fixers, heavy-metal heads, and every kind of musician and musical genre Tehran has to offer. With pop, rock, jazz, and traditional performances played at ecstatic length, the movie’s a spirited, funny-sad portrait of an underground culture that takes its cues from a borderless generation of youth — and that therefore represents the gravest of threats to the powers that be. Director Bahman Ghobadi is an Iranian Kurd, and many of his films have Kurdish themes: “Turtles Can Fly” (2004) and “Half Moon” (2006) are both excellent. (AMC+ and Philo.)
“Persepolis” (2007): Cartoonist Marjane Satrapi adapts her best-selling graphic novel about growing up female and feisty during the Islamic Revolution. Funny and sobering in equal measure, it’s one to watch with older kids and teens. (It’s also the first woman-directed film to be nominated for a best animated feature Oscar.) Satrapi and her French codirector Vincent Paronnaud continued their collaboration with an adaptation of Satrapi’s graphic novel “Chicken with Plums” (2011); Satrapi has gone on to direct live-action films like the Marie Curie biopic “Radioactive” (2019). (Prime Video, Apple TV, YouTube, Fandango at Home, and Spectrum.)
“Where Is the Friend’s House?” (1987): Kiarostami is considered the godfather of modern Iranian film, and this may be his masterpiece. A simple tale — about a young boy in a rural village who tries to return to a troubled classmate a school notebook he mistakenly brought home — becomes an epic of moral clarity seen through a child’s eyes. It starts slow, but stick with it: By the end you’re as invested in little Ahmad’s odyssey as any hero’s journey, and the underlying message — we are born kind, and the best of us take that kindness to heart — is radical in any language. Kiarostami’s filmic legacy is wide and deep, with more than 30 features and 20 short films. “Taste of Cherry” (1997) and “The Wind Will Carry Us” (1999) are among the best. (The Criterion Channel, Prime Video, YouTube, Fandango at Home.)