New Iranian Movies Portray a Society on the Brink

Films produced in Iran today depict social malaise and deep fractures within both family structures and overall society, avoiding themes of a bright future or visions of progress, according to a new study carried out by a government-led think tank. 

The report, published by the Center for Strategic Studies of the Office of the President of the Islamic Republic, looks at 22 films screened at this year’ Fajr Film Festival and concludes that the films portray an “unhealthy society” [Persian link] that boasts no pride in its history. 

Fajr Film Festival in Tehran is the most important film festival in Iran. It was established in 1982, four years after the 1979 Islamic Revolution and when Iran was engaged in a bloody war with Iraq.

Since 2015, the festival has been separated into a national festival in February and an international one in April. The 36th Fajr Festival for domestic films wrapped up in February and the international festival will take place in April 2018.

The festival aims to showcase Iranian cinema. Its prestigious awards are coveted by Iranian filmmakers, and the festival has a wide appeal outside the industry — it is not uncommon for political figures to attend screenings or ceremonies. For example, this year, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif attended the screening of Damascus Time, directed by Ebrahim Hatamikia. “Impressed by the movie, Zarif's eyes welled with tears while describing it as a best manifestation of the bravery of the heroes who fought and lost their lives for us,” a Mehr news agency article reported .

Entitled “Iran in Iranian Cinema,” the study published on March 14 discusses modern Iranian cinema under 13 headings or “concepts,” including “society;” “family;” “women;” “technology;” “future, hopes, dreams;” “characters;” “generational divide;” “law;” “rationality and progress;” “morality, religion, security and freedom;” “national identity;” “social Ills and problems.”

The first conclusion of the study states that the movies screened at the festival portray an Iranian society that is “disorderly”, “chaotic” and “on the brink.” At the same time, the report notes that the films look at the issue of class conflict in a “superficial” manner and do not explore the issue in any great depth. 

An Image of “Failure”

According to the study, the films show an Iranian society that has “no pride in its past,” and that is held in a “suspended present” with no ability to see a “bright future.” Furthermore, it depicts family crises as being insurmountable, with characters unable to resolve matters that result in the preservation of traditional family units. But the study also says that the image of the family “falling apart” presented in these films is false, “faulty,” and “unnatural.” The study finds that the overriding image of the family in these films is one of “failure.”  

Researchers add that the films included in this year’s festival portray girls and the women as outside the context of the family; instead, they are portrayed as “aggressive and irate.” Furthermore, women are shown within the “framework of patriarchy” and as victims of “men’s arrogance, fanaticism and the drive for self-fulfillment.”

The study also documents a lack of “happy” or “contented” characters in the films, with people “unable to define the present,” “unable to find rational solutions” and “unable to establish healthy relations with themselves and with society.”

The Fajr Film Festival has a separate category for “Sacred Defense” films, movies focusing on the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War and the Islamic Republic’s other military engagements. The study reports that the movies screened in this category at the 36th Fajr Festival give priority to “technology” or special effects over “simplicity and intimacy.” In particular, the study highlights Damascus Time — the same film that brought tears to the eyes of Foreign Minister Zarif. The movie tells the story of an Iranian pilot and his copilot son, whose plane is seized by ISIS forces in Syria while carrying a cargo of humanitarian relief supplies to people in a war zone. The new report claims that the movie has sacrificed the most “deep human feelings” for special effects in order to “awe” the viewers.

The study also states that the movies screened at the festival lack “fantasy and dreams” and, instead, present a “blind, endless and very bitter realism.” The films, it says, lack a “vista” and give too much emphasis to “hopelessness,” “lack of belief in the future” and “a world devoid of fantasy and dreams.”

The “Iran in Iranian Cinema” research acknowledges that movies featured at the Fajr Festival usually pay little attention to “religious symbols and rituals,” but then clarifies in parentheses: “This is just a description and is not meant to suggest that religious rituals must be presented in the movies.”

Freedom Without Meaning and No Sense of Progress

The study also concludes that the films either make no distinction between “generational divide” and “generation differences” or that they misinterpret “difference” as a “divide.” The films “portray generational divide in Iran as though the Iranian society is the only one with this problem, whereas generational differences are a natural phenomenon and show social dynamism.”

The report also says that the films often portray the “law” as something “marginal” that does not provide any solutions for the characters, rather than acknowledging its contextual importance in society. 

It also discusses the films in light of the fact that “progress was one of the main slogans of the 12th [Rouhani’s current] Administration,” and yet, it says, these movies generally avoid the concept of “progress” and “never mention progress and development.” — perhaps exposing the researchers' own limitations in trying to remain politically neutral. “Generally, in the films in the competition category of the 2018 Fajr Festival, the absence of dreams have led to the absence of...models for progress. For this reason, they do not pay much attention to the questions of progress and development...images of factories, manufacturing and industrial and scientific progress are almost totally absent from the films.” They portray a “static society without progress and without rational models for achieving a bright future.” 

Moreover, the films limit the concept of freedom to “social freedom” and almost none of them focus on “political freedom.” None of the films showcased in the festival present a setting in which freedom has any meaning. Neither they do present any models for how to cope with problems.

The report comments on the films’ presentation of identity and modern life. “[The films] do not provide a clear and specific picture of a kind of united identity — of course not as an ideal but as an actual fact in current and everyday life of the movies’ protagonists...That is why ‘escape’ in its different forms — travel, cigarettes, emigration, seeking asylum and violence — are chosen by the protagonists as a solution.” 

The overall conclusion of the Center for Strategic Studies’ report is that the films screened at this year’s Fajr Film Festival portray Iran as an “unhealthy society,” and focus on this malaise more than anything else. “Social ills are at the center of the narratives. At the same time, the audiences are not presented with socially acceptable and appropriate solutions to deal with social ills. Social ills and problems are reduced mostly to ‘addiction,’ ‘poverty’ and ‘prostitution.’ And, generally, it is economically lower classes who are portrayed as suffering from these ills. In fact, the films at the 36th festival do not offer a more comprehensive and humane view of other aspects of the lives of people who are suffering from social ills.”

The “Iran in Iranian Cinema" study concludes that the films’ plots and narratives “blackwash” these issues rather than presenting models that allow characters use their own abilities and the possibilities offered by the society to escape from social ills.