Censored Iranian film to be released after 26 years in London
A film by one of Iran’s most prominent filmmakers is due to be released for the first time 26 years after it was made, after the director retrieved censored rushes from an Iranian censors’ office.
The Nights of Zayandehrood, by Mohsen Makhmalbaf, follows the story of an anthropologist and his daughter in Iran before, during and after the 1979 Islamic revolution and caused huge controversy in Iran after its production in 1990, earning the filmmaker death threats. Now the film has been smuggled out of Iran and restored by Makhmalbaf, who is currently living in exile in London. “I succeeded in stealing it but I can’t possibly give more details about how it was done,” he told the Guardian.
Curzon Bloomsbury, which will screen the film in London on Saturday, said: “It’s a miracle it got made in the first place and that it still exists, albeit in a fragmentary form.”
Originally 100 minutes long, censors in Tehran cut 25 minutes without the filmmaker’s permission before allowing it to be screened as part of Tehran’s annual Fajr festival in 1990. According to Makhmalbaf, “some waited through the whole night until morning to be able to get into the theatre to watch the film”.
Makhmalbaf describes suicide as a major theme; a metaphor for a nation losing hope.
The film was never given a release and was later banned after the supreme leader allegedly watched it.