Filmfarsi

Ehsan Khoshbakht

IndieLisboa 2020 • Director's Cut

Iran, United Kingdom, Documentary, 2019, 84′

Today, Iranian cinema is associated with poetry and humanism. But it wasn’t always like that. Ehsan Khoshbakht, co-director of Il Cinema Ritrovato festival, reaches for his VHS private collection and also some reels of films that survived censorship, to create a journey through filmfarsi. This is the term that designates the popular cinema before the 1979 revolution, where tearful musicals, violence, sex and comedy dominated film screens.