Censoring Iranian cinema: normalization of the “modest” woman

ABSTRACT

This research examines the structure of Iranian film that has normalized the image of the “modest” Iranian woman, which has little to no relation to the reality of Iranian women. This power structure includes not only the modesty censorship rules of the Islamic Republic but also international film festivals. Utilizing the concepts of reactive and proactive censorship measures, I argue that censorship not only limits and reacts but also creates the image of the modest woman. Counterintuitively, film festivals play a substantial role in this normalization process. In addition, I contest the popular conceptions of “resistance” when discussing Iranian cinema at foreign film festivals and in academia, arguing that the resistance of films and artists is restricted to the structure that governs them. In addition, I challenge the concept of “Iranian national cinema,” in which film festivals promote a repressive government to oppose another power system; specifically, they reward the image of the Islamic Republic’s ideal woman to oppose popular Hollywood portrayals of women. My objective is not to downplay the value of Iranian cinema but to highlight its flaws and encourage a more critical approach to the international power system regulating Iranian films.

KEYWORDS:

• Iranian cinema
• censorship
• Michel Foucault
• resistance
• modesty rules

Introduction

The Islamic Republic of Iran enforces strict modesty rules for women to promote Islamic moral values and an Islamic way of life. These rules have been in place since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, with laws passed in 1983 and 1995 that force women to wear hijabs and loose-fitting clothing. The government’s enforcement of modesty rules responds to a powerful cultural norm and a political reaction to the Pahlavi regime’s attempts to westernize Iran forcefully. As Hamideh Sedghi (2007) puts it, in the Islamic Republic, “concealing women’s bodies, gender segregation and inequality became integral to state-building and its identity: Islamic, anti-imperialist, and anti-Westernist.” (201) On any right, these rules criminalized any Islamically “immodest” women in Iran by imprisoning and fining them.

The morality police are the enforcers of modesty rules in contemporary Iran, with the power to arrest women who violate them. The severe measures of policing women over years of repression have led them to protest and campaign for more freedom, facing even harsher reactions from the Islamic Government. Some campaigns include One Million Signatures in 2006 and My Stealthy Freedom in 2014, which resulted in women’s widespread imprisonment. Despite these strict measures, resistance to the modesty rules has become a daily activity for Iranian women. Recently, the Woman Life Freedom movement emerged in 2022, calling for a revolution and the end of the Islamic Republic following the murder of a young girl named Mahsa Amini by the morality police.

These modesty rules heavily influence film censorship in Iran. The government’s strict woman-centred censorship regulations ensure the application of the modesty rules. The Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance (MCIG) regulates film production and distribution and can ban or severely censor films due to not adhering to the modesty rules and other political and religious considerations. Through Farabi Cinema Foundation, their executive arm (Saeed Zeydabadi-Nejad 2009, 37), the Ministry also facilitates film production via funding, allocating resources, giving permits, etc. In other words, the responsibilities of authorities in the Ministry are “hemayat (support), hedayat (guidance) and nezarat (literally supervision)” (ibid).

Many scholars see only supervision (nezarat) as censorship; however, in line with Babak Rahimi’s (2015) analysis of Iranian official censorship, this study proposes that censorship in Iran works in two complementary reactive and proactive measures. Reactive measures are the process’s supervision part that bans and cuts films. Reactive measures can potentially go beyond MCIG, and in some cases, filmmakers can get arrested, such as Jafar Panahi and Mohammad Rasoulof’s imprisonment. On the other hand, proactive measures, support and guidance (hemayat and hedayat) “proactively” encourage the production of films that align with the dominant ideology.

Scholars researching Iranian film censorship have studied the relationship between Iranian films and the modesty rules in two complementary approaches: resistance and form. Michelle Langford (2019) states that the allegorical style used by Iranian filmmakers, which creates meaning ambiguity, is a resistance to censorship. (2) This allegorical ambiguous language evades censorship by “saying something while meaning another” (3). On the other hand, Zeydabadi-Nejad (2009) suggests that Iranian filmmakers and audiences resist censorship through “negotiation” in making the films and assigning meaning to them in reception to push their boundaries. (14) This means that, on the one hand, filmmakers negotiate with the officials not to censor their films by utilizing various methods, such as interpreting the sensitive materials in their films as Islamic. On the other hand, the audience, aware of the restrictions, interprets Iranian films and decodes the sensitive messages even if they are not articulated directly.

Moreover, Hamid Naficy (2012b) states that the portrayal of women has gone through four phases in Iranian post-revolutionary cinema due to the modesty censorship rules in which women gradually moved from the background to the foreground. (111) Each phase has had formal consequences for Iranian cinema. In the last phase, beginning in the mid-1990s and ending before the Green Movement, Naficy believes, the filmmakers became critical of modesty rules. They created a cycle of “social problem films,” addressing the issues and hardships of women in Iran (134).

Similarly, film festivals commemorate “Iranian national cinema” produced under the modesty censorship rules. In international festivals, some of these films are celebrated not only due to their artistic merits but also due to the filmmakers’ resistance to the censorship modesty rules. Films such as Dayere/The Circle (Jafar Panahi, 2000) and Man Taraneh 15 Sal Daram/I’m Taraneh, 15 (Rasul Sadr Amoli, 2002) have been praised for challenging the censorship guidelines by discussing the hardships of women in Iran.

While resistance to censorship is valid, these films portray Iranian women in an Islamically “modest” fashion. This portrayal cannot mirror or even discuss the modern Iranian women who have protested, were imprisoned, and, in some cases, died fighting these rules for generations. This image of the “modest woman” indirectly reinforces the repression by reproducing the ideal image of the Islamic Republic. With the rise of female activists on social media who do not adhere to modesty rules and the Woman Life Freedom movement in Iran, this issue has become more prominent in the post-green movement age. The concern is that this image, portraying women in Iranian films, seems normal. The level of normalization is staggering, considering that if women in Iranian films behave immodestly or do not wear hijab, they are considered criminals and face jail. Many actresses in Iranian cinema, such as Golshifteh Farahani and Taraneh Alidoosti, appeared unveiled on social media or in foreign films and were jailed and tortured by the Islamic Republic. Therefore, seeing Islamically modest women as normal in Iranian films is shocking compared to paratextual discourses surrounding them.

How did this normalization happen? Why are these films considered resistant when they adhere to the modesty rules with little to no deviations from them? It seems that there is a need for a nuanced approach to account for the relationship between modesty rules in Iranian films, the international power structure, and the Islamic republic that regulates these rules to understand how the image of the “modest” woman in Iranian cinema became normal with the films that are hailed in international film festivals and academia as resistant.

Background

Although the Islamic republic is a very restrictive structure and semi-closed system of government based on one of the many interpretations of Islam, it is part of a broader international power structure of neoliberal capitalism. It defines itself and earns its legitimacy in part by reacting to this capitalist power structure. Therefore, it cannot be understood as a separate entity and as Sedghi (2007) states, “Although religion and culture leave important imprints on women’s lives, they must be understood within the broader historical, sociopolitical, and economic contexts as they may be shaped by trends in global political economy” (202–3).

Similarly, Iranian cinema should be understood and studied in the broader power structure in international film markets. Therefore, studying Iranian cinema just in terms of the resistance of its filmmakers to censorship of the Islamic Republic, as most scholars do, or just being the result of film festival policies and international markets, as many proponents of the Islamic Republic or post-colonialist scholars do, is insufficient. The structure should be seen as one integrated power structure, or game as Foucault sees it, in which different players practice power and resist each other. In the words of Michel Foucault (2019), I must explore how Iranian films and filmmakers are governed or how “the possible field of action” of them is structured (341).

Another significant factor is that cinema is a business or industry that should have funding and markets. Funding sources in Iranian cinema come from different avenues; private, government, and festival funding are the most prevalent ones. In today’s film market in Iran, there are three funding and distribution avenues for filmmakers: propaganda films, domestic box office, and international markets. By propaganda, I refer to films created only to propagate Islamic republic ideals and ideologies, and filmmakers can sell their scripts and expertise to their production institutions. Some of them also gross at the domestic box office, but for the vast majority, the return is not significant (in the first years of the Islamic Republic, most films used public funding, and return was not an issue altogether).

For other non-propaganda films, however, because the films should be distributed in the market, the directors internalize the Islamic Republic’s censorship, which conditions them to avoid direct criticism of political and religious situations and figures or controversial issues, as it could jeopardize future projects and distribution of their films (R. J Poudeh and M. R Shirvani 2008, 33). Regarding the issue of women, Ehsan Aqababaee and Mohammad Razaghi (2022) demonstrate that even in the most politically and culturally open post-revolutionary era, the Reform period, 1997–2005, female characters in Iranian films were direct products of Islamic Ideology. They assert that most women in the films of the time are dominated by religious and traditional ideologies championed by Fundamentalists (260).

On the other hand, the international film market is one of the main avenues that made resistance possible (and in these years, for many films became the reason for resistance). The most significant (if not the only) way for Iranian films to reach that market has always been through film festivals in both pre and post-revolutionary eras. Filmmakers often receive funding or marketing opportunities through the festivals, which may come with certain conditions related to style and content. This practice has led many filmmakers to produce films that meet international demand (Anne Démy-Geroe 2020, 93). Therefore, the international market has its own type of censorship, which is proactive rather than reactive. I will discuss this matter comprehensively in this paper.

I will not discuss propaganda films because, although some question the image of the “modest” woman, they are aligned with the right-wing Islamic Fundamentalist ideas about women. However, regarding other films, the directors of the first and second generations (those who appeared before and during the early years of the revolution, respectively) targeted either the domestic or foreign market. For instance, a domestic public screening of Abbas Kiarostami’s movie was not vital because the overseas market solely offered a profitable investment return for his works. However, directors like Fereydoon Jeyrani, Behrouz Afkhami, etc., tried their best to negotiate with the system to obtain production and exhibition permits for the domestic box office, as that was the only available market for them. Although they attempted to expand the modesty censorship guidelines in response to the demands of their predominantly Hollywood-influenced narratives, in the end, they were forced to internalize it to a great extent. As time passed, the domestic market became more problematic and destabilized for a variety of reasons, including the rise of popular comedies, the re-radicalization of the Islamic Republic following Ahmadi Nezhad’s presidency and the tightening of censorship, the ease of access to foreign films via the internet, and the devaluation of the Rial.

Therefore, in recent years, the situation has become more complicated. Unlike most directors of the first and second generation of post-revolutionary Iranian cinema, the majority of the directors of the third and fourth generation (directors who emerged during the reform era and directors who emerged in the post-green movement era), such as Asghar Farhadi, Tahmineh Milani, Said Roustai, Houman Seyedi, etc. have succeeded to attract both domestic and international markets (we can call them hybrid films) while staying away from propaganda films. Daniele Rugo (2016) explains the hybridity of Farhadi’s cinema, which can more or less be expanded to many post-Farhadi Iranian filmmakers. In other words, the new generation created films that entered the international market and should not have been banned in Iran without resorting to making propaganda films. Consequently, whereas the previous generation faced and internalized the censorship of either the Islamic Republic or the international film industry, the new Iranian filmmakers faced and internalized the censorship measures of both (with varying degrees) to be included in both markets.

Before getting into the specifics of how censorship in both markets leads to normalizing the “modest” woman’s image, it is necessary to provide a brief historical context for modesty rules in Iranian society. This historical context will show how modesty was perceived and regulated in Iran before and during the Islamic Republic’s government and how it has transformed over the years.

Modesty rules in Iranian society and cinema

Cinema entered Iran almost immediately after its invention. The reason was the infatuation of the last Shah of the Qajar Dynasty, Mozafar-e-edin Shah, with Western culture and scientific discoveries. From its start, cinema collided with the Islamic norms of Iran, and the history of Iranian Islamic film censorship began. At the time, women had no rights in the modern sense of the word: right to work, vote, study, drive, and so forth. Except in a minority of modern and educated families, women had no right to appear publicly. They remained in andarooni (inside the house). It was not a law; it was built into the structure, and most people accepted it as a norm. Reza Khan, a military officer who desired to transform Iran into a cohesive, modern nation, rose to power in this situation.

Reza Khan took control in 1921 in a coup d’état; in 1925, he established the Pahlavi dynasty. Reza Khan’s relationship with Western modernity reached its pinnacle during his visit to Turkey in 1934. The reforms of Turkey’s president, Mustafa Kemal Pasha (commonly known as Kemal Atatürk), who ordered Turkish males to wear Western clothing and women to take off their hijab, captivated him (Hamid Reza Sadr 2006, 16). Reza Khan came back to Iran and, with Ataturk as his model, started the process of modernizing Iran. For him, one of the most important aspects of modernization was the de-Islamization of his country. He intended to take his people to the paradise of “freedom” by force, and indeed, force was essential because Iranian Muslims and religious authorities would not accept a “free” way of life without a battle. Beginning with his own wife and children, he forcibly unveiled women and began granting them privileges they were unaware they might have. This ironical dictatorship of freedom could be one of the factors that motivated an Islamic revolution almost fifty years later, where women again had to wear hijab in public and be “modest,” but this time not through norms but by the power of modesty rules.¹

Cinema was one of the West’s most modern apparatus, and Reza Khan could have used its powers. However, because cinema displayed the unveiled foreign women, Shaikh Fazlollah Nuri had put it in a state of “alleged prohibition” (Naficy 90). Therefore, the first instance of censorship in the history of cinema in Iran was woman-centred. It was also political as Shaikh Fazlollah Nuri was the pioneer of political Islam who died in the way of opposing the modernization of Iran before Reza Khan came into power.² In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Muslims had set fire to cinemas, especially in Tehran, because of the presence of women, and even the first Iranian film school founded by Avance Okaniance could not attract women in an Islamic structure (Shahla Mirbakhtyar 2015, 14).

Despite this, Iranian filmmakers began to produce films championing modernity and opposing tradition. The most important film of this era Dokhtar-e Lur/The Lur Girl (Sepanta, 1933) was the first Iranian sound film that created the first female star, Rouhangiz Kermani (Saminejad), and the first time an Iranian woman allowed herself to be filmed without a veil (ibid, 18).³

During the Second World War, cinema could not improve. Though Iran was neutral because of Reza Khan’s sympathy with Germany, Great Britain and the Soviet Union occupied north and south of Iran during and after the war and forced Reza Khan to replace himself with his son Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. In the late 1940s, with a sense of relative peace, Iranian cinema gained fame, mainly through a popular genre called Filmfarsi. Under Reza Khan’s forced modernization efforts, sexual norms in Iran’s metropolitan centres gradually loosened, leaving women unsure whether to embrace modernity by abandoning the veil and embracing shorter skirts or cling to traditional values. These contradictions were “a source of cultural, moral, social, and political ‘schizophrenia’ for non-traditional Iranian women during this time” (Najmabadi 1991, 66). Simultaneously, urban areas, dominated by male workers, witnessed an increase in the acceptance of sexual content, and the founders of Filmfarsi quickly realized that taking advantage of essential elements such as music, dance, sex, and violence would enhance the chance of success of their films.

In many films, women were portrayed as cabaret dancers or prostitutes “ whom the moral male character should save; however, there was an enormous number of films, mostly comedies, in which female characters were portrayed as sexual objects which were the source of pleasure for male characters, requiring no salvation. In other words, sexuality was depicted for the sake of sexuality, for pleasure, with no moral connotations whatsoever” (Taheri, 2023) The birth of Filmfarsi marked not only the start of Iranian Islamic society’s moral issues with cinema but also an instance of the popularisation of sex in the contradictory country of Iran with a secular state and a profoundly religious social structure.

Iranian Muslims saw this “degradation” as the result of imperialism of the West or Westoxification. (Najmabadi, 51). The West, especially the UK and US, had many interests in Iranian society, such as the country’s oil and had influenced Iranian culture. Therefore, when the Muslims came into power in 1978 with Ayatollah Khomeini as their leader, in a political act, they restricted Iranian society and cinema by imposing modesty rules of the Islamic Republic in which women cannot be touched, shown without a scarf, and behave or be treated in a way that is immoral or un-Islamic. In other words, thus, came the stage for the Islamization of gender relations and the consolidation of state power through “reveiling” (Sedghi 206).

Modesty rules were defined and are still used as a political device against the mentioned imperialism of the capitalist world structure. It can be argued that from the early twentieth century to the present, controlling women’s sexuality remained at the core of the power struggle between rival groups in the political system and its religious contender, the clerical establishment (ibid 201). In other words, whereas Pahlavi forcibly unveiled women to modernize the nation, the Islamic Republic veiled them to confront Western influence. In this way, women played a significant role in the success and legitimization of the Islamic revolution. They were utilized to promote an Islamic and Shi’i heritage, symbolic of the Islamic Republic’s anti-imperialist and anti-Western position, and the society was “cleansed” through their control or repression (ibid 206).

Moreover, it is essential to note that, as Hamid Dabashi (1998) contends, although modesty rules appeal to a powerful norm in Iranian Islamic society, as seen in the brief history I provided, they were inconsistent with the fabric of Iranian society as a whole, even at the time of the Islamic revolution. “Generational differences [from Reza Khan to the post-revolutionary era] led to situations in which while mothers and grandmothers in certain families veiled themselves, their daughters and granddaughters did not. In addition, veiling was a prominently urban phenomenon. In Northern, Western, Eastern, and Southern parts of Iran, among the Gilakis, Kurds, Turkomans, Baluchis, and the southern tribes and communities, the practice of veiling is to this day almost non-existent⁴” (364). In contemporary Iran, with the prevalence of social media full of veilless, “immodest” women, modesty rules are increasingly losing the norms that once buttressed them. Furthermore, they show the immense gap between Iran’s reality and the image produced by Iranian films.

Post-revolutionary modesty film censorship rules and resistance

As Negar Mottahedeh (2008, 2) states, during the Islamic revolution, it was believed that “women’s bodies were used by media technologies to derail and weaken Iranian society, leaving Iran susceptible to other contaminants ushered in by colonial invasion, imperialism, and capitalism.” Therefore, by portraying veiled female bodies, post-Revolutionary cinema aims to protect society from the perceived hostile effects of media and to counter Western influences of voyeurism and fetishism (ibid). To achieve this, the Iranian Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance’s (MCIG) nezarat (supervision) committee is responsible for regulating the portrayal of women in Iranian and foreign films based on shari’a laws and women’s “high” position in society (Abdollah Nuri 1996).

Iranian cinema has always struggled with censorship. However, as Hamid Taheri (2023) has discussed, the most significant difference between pre- and post-revolution Iranian film censorship is woman-centred and modesty rule issues. In 1998, Ataollah Mohajerani, the Minister of Culture at the time, mapped out the requirements that Iranian films must meet to receive a screening permit. He emphasized that the issue of hijab, is an accepted norm in Iranian society and the cinema industry. Thus, filmmakers should not show women without a veil, even in private settings such as a kitchen or a bedroom. Moreover, men and women cannot touch each other, not even in a simple handshake (Gönül Dönmez-Colin 2004, 101).

As mentioned, various themes, scenes, mise-en-scenes, metaphors, and allegories in Iranian films are viewed by some Iranian film experts as means of resistance against the Islamic government. However, two essential factors are frequently underemphasized in these investigations. When attributing resistance to these moments, it is vital to enquire “to whom” are these elements resisting? And “what is the extent” of the resistance?

Regarding the first question, it is commonly assumed that these films resist the Islamic Republic. However, though some of these films do not portray a positive image of Iran, the government supports their distribution.⁵ Some suggest this is an attempt to enhance Iran’s global reputation and counter scrutiny over its human rights violations (Poudeh and Shiravani, 336–37). Moreover, many see the Islamic Republic as a radical Muslim state, creating a binary that simplifies and demonizes the government. However, the Islamic Republic comprises different factions, including liberals, radical Muslims, reformists, technocrats, etc. All of them have existed concurrently at any given time in its history, though with varying degrees of power. Finally, the Islamic Republic’s stance on women’s rights may appear reactionary in cosmopolitan areas but can be seen as progressive from some rural or small-town viewpoints. Therefore, some resistance in films is resistance to the norms that the Islamic Republic is also considered resistant to. For example, the second episode of Roozi Ke Zan Shodam/The Day I Became a Woman (Marzieh Meshkini, 2000) tells the story of a traditional southern family who opposes a woman from trying to be a professional cyclist. This film is held as a type of resistance to modesty rules in the works of scholars such as Langford (2019). As beautiful, masterful, and poetic as the story is told, it is resisting a regressive idea that the Islamic Republic is officially against, though some parts of the same radicals are inside the government.⁶

Regarding the second question, in Iran’s state-controlled censorship atmosphere, there are two types of regulatory measures: reactive and proactive (Rahimi 2015, 360). Reactive measures are the most discussed part of the censorship including removing or adding parts to films or legal prosecutions such as the imprisonment of filmmakers (such as Tahmineh Milani’s and Panahi’s imprisonment). However, the proactive part of censorship is less discussed. The proactive part aims to produce media and use soft power to advance the political and economic agendas of the state (ibid). In other words, while reactive measures come into play after the production of films, the proactive ones seek to control film production in Iran are in play before the production with funding, providing permits, etc, and after the production by giving awards, positions, screenings, and so forth to compliant filmmakers.

As briefly mentioned in the introduction, one of the most significant proactive measures of the Islamic Republic aimed at regulating Iranian cinema was establishing the Farabi Cinema Foundation as an independent organization under the MCIG’s supervision in 1983. The foundation’s task was to implement guidance (hedayat) and support (hemayat) policies for cinema. It provided financial assistance and technical support and promoted films approved by the Ministry (Naficy 2012a, 127–29.). Moreover, many other organizations and companies close to the system fund films or facilitate their production. Owj Arts and Media Organization, Hozeie Honari, Iranian Youth Cinema Society, and others control film production not by reactively censoring them but by proactively creating them according to the taste and interests of different parts of the Islamic Republic’s regime. Therefore, instead of just asking how the censor restricts, we should complement it by exploring how it produces through permits, funding, etc.

As an example, Démy-Geroe (2020) explains how the Iranian government supported the development of films showing a particular sort of “modest” woman who becomes a temporary bride (sighe) as opposed to being sexually open. In 2002, she saw several films on the subject. When she questioned Farabi authorities about this relationship, they rejected the possibility of a link between funding and the subject matter. However, a film industry insider stated that filmmakers may highlight specific themes to gain government backing (22). In all films that want to receive permits, including the perceived resistant ones, the hemayat and hedayat part of the Ministry asks for changes in the films to align them with Islamic Ideology. Moreover, as Hamid H Taheri (2024) has shown, Iranian filmmakers inject the ideals of the Islamic Republic into the micro parts of their films as a negotiation tactic with the system. These micro-injections are a part of the proactive censorship measures of the state. To put it in Dabashi’s terms, by proactive measures, “An Orwellian nightmare come true, ‘the Ministry of Guidance’ in effect uses the effervescent creativity of filmmakers to normalize this ideal picture of an Islamic woman” (365).

In short, it might be argued that some resistant films are only considered as such because of an artificial binary between Iranian filmmakers and the Islamic Republic created by scholars. Second, there is no explanation of the degree of resistance the films are practising, resulting in an overreading of films and, consequently, an indirect perpetuation of the image of the “modest” woman.

On the other hand, it is crucial to recognize that international markets and film festivals also have their own agendas and motivations. Therefore, they, too, engage in a combination of reactive and proactive censorship to pursue their specific goals. This means that the portrayal of women in Iranian cinema in international markets is influenced not only by the censorship imposed by the Iranian government but also by the practices of foreign markets and film festivals.

Iranian cinema in international festivals

The international festival power structure has another proactive and reactive censorship. In reactive measures, film festivals can ask for a change in a film, such as the example of Gilaneh (Rakhshan Bani E’temad, 2004), where two episodes of it were censored to be presented as an anti-war film with higher quality (Démy-Geroe, 105–6). These reactive measures are rare, and it is by proactive ones that film festivals shape Iranian cinema. Inclusion and exclusion of films based on criteria and standards, or what is typically referred to as “selection,” is one of film festivals’ most effective preventative strategies. As Démy-Geroe states, an Iranian film screened internationally at a festival might fit into one of three categories: a “true” arthouse film, a film designed to appeal to Western interests or a film with content unlikely to receive a domestic screening permit. Many filmmakers adjust their filmmaking to meet festivals’ dynamic trends and priorities, turning their films into an extended international conversation on cinema. This impacts national cinemas, particularly in a country like Iran, where domestic screening is challenging (81–93).

Few films, such as those by Abbas Kiarostami, can be considered solely art films. Moreover, many films by “insider” directors, whose loyalty to the regime is unquestioned (Zeydabadi-Nezhad, 38), are often excluded from international festivals as they may not align with Western interests and receive permits in Iran. Therefore, some of these films that challenge the image of the “modest” woman, such as Shokaran/Hemlock (1999) by Alireza Afkhami and Shame’ Akhar/The Last Supper (2002) or Ab va Atash/Water and Fire (2001) by Fereydoon Jeyrani, are not showcased in these festivals. This has contributed to the virtual elimination of a powerful trend of resistant directors to the modesty rules that, as mentioned, have lost their domestic market. In this way, they are also excluded from international festivals and, consequently, both markets. Almost all these directors resorted to making propaganda films in recent years because it is the only avenue, they can survive in.

Moreover, “Western appeal,” as Démy-Geroe puts it, is “soft arthouse,” meaning “the film is formally conventional, not too tough, that it carries a strong emotional appeal, and often showcases the landscape, culture, or milieu in a readily consumable form. Such a spectrum of films is produced by most national cinemas, from France through to Iran, and can be characterized as suitable for the international (festival) market” (Démy-Geroe, 79). To be able to be included in the “soft arthouse” category, many Iranian filmmakers, like many non-western directors, resort to what scholars call Self-Orientalism. Many directors present stereotypical images of characters based on their clothing and language/accent use and focus on limited themes such as depression, solitude, and existential crisis. Furthermore, because of the political criteria prevalent in film festivals, filmmakers may feel compelled to conform to unwritten industry rules that require specific images from the “Orient” to be produced (Can Diker and Esma Koç 2021, 577).

The emergence of neorealism in Iranian films, which has gained significant international attention, as noted by Tapper (as cited in Démy-Geroe, 94), can result from artistic choices and Self-Orientalism. Self-Orientalism may have played a significant role in forming and shaping the realist aesthetic of Iranian “national” cinema that deliberately portrays the lives of ordinary Iranians in a fashion suitable for the Western gaze. Prevalence of themes such as socio-economic struggles, political unrest, cultural nuances, and especially rural areas and landscapes, Iranian filmmakers advertently or inadvertently respond to the expectations and desires of international audiences who seek a particular vision of the “exotic” Iran. In recent years, however, international festivals started to lose interest in the previous generation’s Iranian realist films, and these elements became less prominent in Iranian cinema (Démy-Geroe, 102). Therefore, Iranian films appeared in film festivals that, while remaining realist dealt primarily with the middle-class or urban residents, which is connected to the hybridity mentioned. Therefore, the rural films about the lives and philosophies of the Iranian primitives were almost entirely gone from the festival circuit. However, some elements of Orientalism remained in Iranian films that still appealed to festivals, the most significant of them: Iran’s “modest” women. A type of exotic, asexual, bodyless, moral woman who is restricted and suppressed and is a victim of male-oriented patriarchal Muslim society, fulfilling the desire for the image of the Other. Tapper (2002) confirms this by stating that the portrayal of women in Iranian cinema has been a complex issue that has contributed to the attractiveness of Iranian films to Western viewers. Azadeh Farahmand (2002) further asserts that the loosening of censorship laws in the late 1990s facilitated the rise of celebrity culture in Iran, thereby exacerbating the exoticism commonly attributed to Iranian films in global markets. Therefore, film festivals not only have no issues with this image, but they eagerly celebrate it and actively request its replication in Iranian cinema and other Muslim countries.

Proactive measures of film festivals, other than the selection of already produced films, extend to the funding of films that reproduce the market’s desires. As Farahmand argues, “Because of inflation and the drop in the value of the rial, investment in Iranian films by European companies has indeed proved rather lucrative.” (94) Since the time of Farahmand’s writing, the value of the Iranian Rial has significantly decreased, making it more financially advantageous to finance films using foreign currency in Iran. Consequently, securing domestic funding for films has become increasingly challenging, except for those with a propagandistic agenda or some comedies. Démy-Geroe (2020) shows that many Iranian directors, such as Farhadi, Mousavi, Jalili, and so forth, received funding for different stages of the production of their films from the Berlinale World Cinema Fund, the Asia Pacific Screen Awards, The Adelaide Film Festival, the Hubert Bals Fund, and many more (84–100). Robert Koehler goes as far as to say that it is “by now widely accepted that without Rotterdam’s Hubert Bals Fund […] a significant number in the global ‘margins’ would have been unable to make films at all” (qt. in Felicia Chan 2011, 253). Of course, these funds are allocated to projects aligned with the Western market and proactively produce films that perpetuate many orientalist stereotypes, such as the modest Muslim woman.

Furthermore, European festivals have promoted national cinemas from their advent, often defined in opposition to Hollywood (ibid, 259). One of the criticisms of Hollywood storytelling is the portrayal of women, as highlighted by feminist film theorists. Ironically, the creation of the “modest” post-revolutionary Iranian woman was also a reaction to the Western commodification of women. As a result, the regressive Islamic republic and the progressive left find common ground in the capitalist-oriented world power structure, as the ideal Muslim woman shares many characteristics with the ideal woman of Marxist and left “intellectuals” (Haideh Moghissi 1995, 27–8). In other words, the image of the Muslim woman as asexual, modest, and emancipated from the alleged sexualization of women in Western countries might appeal to certain narratives of the progressive left.

Film festivals also have a long history of collaboration with the Islamic Republic of Iran, with Farabi being the sole distributor of Iranian films for many years and compromising the content of films to be included in their programs. An example is The Search for Common Ground program at Cannes in 1998, facilitating negotiations between Iran and the West through cinema, resulting in agreements for film festivals, student exchanges, co-productions, and entry visas for film personalities. However, festivals have also excluded filmmakers such as Bahram Beizai, with direct problems with the Islamic Republic (Farahmand 95–98). While it may seem that a gap between the Islamic Republic and Festivals has been created in recent years, one might consider that all of Farhadi’s films have been sent to the Academy Awards as representatives of the Islamic Republic. The head of the Cinema Organization claimed that he lobbied voters to help the film win an Oscar due to a direct order from Ahmadi Nezhad (Javad Shamaghdari 2023).

Other factors

In this study, while I have focused on analyzing the significant role played by the Iranian government and international film festivals in shaping Iranian cinema and promoting the image of the “modest” woman, I acknowledge that this issue is complex and involves more interconnected factors. One such factor is that the film industry is male-dominated in Iran and potentially within foreign festivals. Moreover, the education system in Iran, which constructs gender identities in alignment with patriarchal power structures, also contributes to the normalization of modest women. Furthermore, it is essential to note that the normal image of Iranian women, as discussed in this analysis, excludes not only modern individuals but also radical Muslim Iranian women. There is a need for further exploration of the middle-class structure within Iranian cinema from which most directors emerge, and that often fails to accurately represent the diverse realities of women across different social strata, including marginalized and disadvantaged individuals and wealthy Muslim ideologues. Lastly, it is essential to recognize that critiquing or identifying patterns within a system does not necessitate dismissing all system elements as inherently problematic. Instead, this analysis aims to provide a re-evaluation and groundwork for future policymaking and a deeper understanding of the complexities while acknowledging the significant contributions of Iranian artists, international festivals, and academia. In my agenda, I follow Foucault in studying power relations, who stated, “I do this because those who are enmeshed, involved, in these power relations can, in their actions, their resistance, their rebellion, escape them, transform them, in a word, cease being submissive”. (Foucault, 294)

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Hamid Taheri

Hamid Taheri is a doctoral candidate in media studies at RMIT University in Melbourne, where he investigates the effects of modesty censorship rules on Iranian films. He has written extensively in Iranian and foreign publications and peer-reviewed journals such as the Quarterly Review of Film and Video and the Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication. He is also a translator, and Rick Altman’s Film/Genre, translated into Farsi, is the most renowned of his translations. Taheri is also a screenwriter and filmmaker whose name appears on several TV series, feature and short films.

Notes

1. Muslims saw their way of life and values, which included the imposition of modesty rules on women, in danger. This danger built up over the Pahlavi regime, culminating in an Islamic revolution.

2. He was also one of the mentors of Ayatollah Khomeini, the first supreme leader of the Iranian Islamic revolution in 1978.

3. However, as Islamic society was not ready for a female star, Rouhangiz Kermani (Saminejad) had no choice but to change her family name and live the rest of her life in exile after playing only one more film (Sadr, 28).

4. It is important to note that Dabashi refers to the systematic veiling of the Islamic Republic and not veiling in general, as women in almost all these parts are expected to have some kind of veiling.

5. Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s early films, and the mentioned Man Taraneh 15 Sal Daram/I’m Taraneh are good examples of such support for films that portray Iranian society in a negative light.

6. One example in this film is the opposition to the participation of women in sports which is a regressive idea prevalent in rural areas not officially supported by the Islamic Republic.