Women, Life, Freedom Leaves Its Mark On A New Wave Of Iranian Cinema

Four years after the death of Mahsa Amini sparked Iran's largest protest movement in decades, the impact of Women, Life, Freedom is in Iranian society.

One of the movement's most lasting effects has been on the way Iranian filmmakers portray women. Characters who once had to navigate the restrictions imposed by Iran's censorship system are increasingly being presented as women who simply refuse to accept them.

In Jafar Panahi's film It Was Just An Accident, one of the central female characters is unveiled, resolute, and pragmatic, forcing those around her to confront uncomfortable truths. Panahi has described the character as reflecting the women who took control of their own destinies during the Women, Life, Freedom protests.

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September 16 marks the fourth anniversary of Amini's death.

Twenty-two years old at the time, Amini was held by the so-called morality police in Tehran for an alleged violation of the mandatory hijab law. After three days of detention, she died from what authorities said was heart failure.

Eyewitnesses, including some women who were detained with Amini, however, said she was severely beaten by police. Her family said she was healthy before the arrest and blame police brutality for her death.

The once-feared patrols that policed women's clothing head-to-toe have largely vanished from everyday street life since the mass protests of 2022. The compulsory hijab rules are still there, but their enforcement has visibly eased across Iran's major cities, previously battlegrounds for women fighting for their freedom.

But the shift is not limited to the hijab.

In Soheil Beiraghi's Bidad (Outcry), made in Iran without official authorization, the central conflict revolves around another prohibition imposed on women: singing in public.

But the film's concern is ultimately larger than singing. The voice becomes a question of who is allowed to be seen and heard in public and who is expected to remain silent. When Seti, the film's protagonist, sings without waiting for permission, her act becomes a form of civil disobedience.

The street, much as it did during the 2022 protests, becomes more than an ordinary public space; it transforms into a place for making demands and resisting restrictions.

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A growing group of Iranian filmmakers have gone further, producing films outside the rules imposed by the Culture Ministry and without the official permits traditionally required to make and release a movie in Iran.

They include Navid Mihandoust's The Cafe, Karim Lakzadeh's Dark Matter, Mehrnoush Aliya's A Thousand and One Frames, Sahand Kabiri's The Group, Mohammad Shirvani's Cesarean Weekend, Abbas Nezamdoost's Dual, and Ali Asgari's A Little Light, among others.

The significance of these films lies not only in what they depict, but in how they are made.

For decades, Iranian filmmakers learned to work within or around an elaborate censorship system. Social realities could be addressed, but they first had to be reshaped to fit what the authorities would permit. The filmmaker's task was often to find a way to tell the truth after passing it through the filter of censorship.

The post-2022 films represent a different approach, and that is simply removing the filter.

That decision has come at a cost. Legal cases have been opened against most of the above-named filmmakers and their crews, with some receiving prison sentences and fines. Their offense, in effect, has been to change cinema's relationship with the realities unfolding around them.

The phenomenon did not begin with the Women, Life, Freedom movement. Iranian cinema has a long history of confronting censorship, while women filmmakers and actresses have spent decades pushing against restrictions on their representation and their bodies.

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But the September 2022 unrest undeniably accelerated a break with the status quo. Instead of asking how far they can push the boundaries of officially permitted cinema, an increasing number of filmmakers are asking what happens if they abandon those boundaries altogether.

That has produced a parallel Iranian cinema, one that can be made without official permission, in which actresses can appear unveiled and women can sing, speak, and move through public spaces without the constraints imposed by the state.

Iran's authorities can still control which films receive official permits and which can be shown in domestic cinemas. What has become harder to control, however, is the act of making the films themselves.

And in the years since the 2022 protests, that may be the most consequential change of all. Iranian filmmakers are increasingly refusing to make reality pass through the state's filter before putting it on screen.