Annual Festival of Films from Iran

About the Event

Schedule of Events

6:15 pm: A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night

"Defies genre." - Kamelya Youssef

"Amirpour combines elements of film noir and the restraint of Iranian New Wave cinema with the subdued depictions of a bored youth culture found in early Jim Jarmusch the comparisons go on and on, but the result is wholly original." - Eric Kohn, Indiewire.

Fortuitously, though Ana Lily Amirpour's hit feature debut was not presented during our 25th Festival of Films from Iran in February 2015, it had played the month prior, and was so popular that it was brought back to the Film Center for an encore run during the festival. Writing about the film, Barbara Scharres wrote, "Iranian American director Amirpour emerges as a full-blown auteur in this spookily sumptuous vampire tale set in a dusty ghost town crawling with low-life losers who just happen to speak Persian. James Dean- styled hunk Arash has a cat for a sidekick and the hottest wheels in town until the drug dealer takes the keys. The Girl, a nocturnal specter in a long black chador, considers her options. Love bites."

Awards & Nominations

Winner - Breakthrough Director Award, Gotham Awards
Nominee - Audience Award, Gotham Awards
Nominee - Best First Feature, Film Independent Spirit Awards
Nominee - Audience Award, Sundance Film Festival

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8:30 pm: Taxi

"An act of defiance that's also a sublime piece of cinema, and it ranks among the director's finest work." - Sheri Linden, Los Angeles Times

"Subtle, humorous and humane." - Peter Bradshaw, Guardian

One of the most popular films presented at the Film Center in 2015 (released outside of the Festival of Films from Iran timing, but in the spirit of the festival), TAXI, like Jafar Panahi's THIS IS NOT A FILM (2011) and NO BEARS (2022), has smacked against but never crumbled under a repressive regime’s efforts of suppression. The resourceful director, still laboring under a 20-year ban on filmmaking, mounted surveillance cameras on the dashboard of a taxi of which he is the driver. Blurring the line between fact and fiction, Panahi picks up a series of passengers, all of whom have a universe of opinions and perspectives on life in Tehran.

Awards & Nominations

Winner - Golden Bear, Berlin Film Festival
Winner - FIPRESCI Prize, Berlin Film Festival

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