GET TICKETS

2025 CELEBRATION OF IRANIAN CINEMA AT STANFORD

Stanford, California

Experience the vibrant world of Iranian cinema at the inaugural 2025 Celebration of Iranian Cinema exclusively at Stanford University, presented in partnership with the Stanford Hamid and Christina Moghadam Program in Iranian Studies and the UCLA Film and Television Archive.
This highly anticipated event features some of the most acclaimed Iranian films of the year making their exclusive Bay Area premiere. Join us for a remarkable journey through stories that inspire, challenge, and captivate.

Sat, August 23 – 7:00 pm
SUN, August 24 – 3:00 pm

Tatami – SOLD OUT

 

Co-directed by Guy Nattiv (Academy Award-Winner for Skin) and Zar Amir (Cannes Film Festival Best Actress-Winner for Holy Spider), TATAMI follows Iranian female judoka Leila (Arienne Mandi) and her coach Maryam (Zar Amir), who travel to the World Judo Championships, intent on bringing home Iran’s first gold medal. Midway through the Championships, they receive a chilling ultimatum from the Islamic Republic: Leila must fake an injury and lose, or be branded a traitor. With her own safety and her family’s freedom on the line, Leila faces an impossible choice: submit to the Iranian regime, as her coach Maryam implores her to do, or fight on for the gold.

Director/Screenwriter: Guy Nattiv, Zar Amir
Cast: Arienne Mandi, Zar Amir, Jaime Ray Newman, Ash Golden

Color, in Persian with English subtitles, 105 min.

Preceded By

Suitcase

Iran, 2023

Farhang Foundation Short Film Festival 1st Prize Winner

From a large red suitcase laying on the cement of an underpass emerges an even larger man who proceeds about his day in the streets of Tehran — until, after a momentary distraction, he turns to find his suitcase has been stolen. As he desperately searches the city, memories of his previous life flood back and the sense of loss compounds in this by turns surreal and deeply poignant representation of the refugee experience.

Directors/Screenwriters: Saman Hosseinpuor, Ako Zandkarimi

Color, in Persian with English subtitles, 15 min.

GET TICKETS

---

Sat, August 23 – 4:00 pm

The Witness — SOLD OUT

Germany/Austria, 2024

Winner of the audience award in the Orizzonti Extra section of last year’s Venice Film Festival, The Witness was co-written by director Nader Saeivar and Jafar Panahi who both won the best screenplay prize at Cannes for Panahi’s 3 Faces (2018). Maryam Boubani delivers a compelling performance as a retired teacher and family matriarch who suspects her son-in-law, a powerful government official, of murdering her adoptive daughter. A riveting portrait of a woman driven to seek her own justice in defiance of the malign forces working to conceal the truth, The Witness itself definitely challenges Iran’s censorship regime with images of liberated women unseen in Iranian cinema for generations.

Director: Nader Saeivar
Screenwriter: Nader Saeivar, Jafar Panahi
Cast: Maryam Boubani, Nader Naderpour, Abbas Imani

Color, in Persian with English subtitles, 100 min.

Preceded By

Left Handed

Iran, 2024

Farhang Foundation Short Film Festival 2nd Prize Winner

Maryam, a 38-year-old factory worker, is the head of a family of four, struggling to make ends meet. In a desperate act to support her family, she makes a drastic and traumatic decision related to her job. This decision leads to unforeseen consequences, leaving her in a situation she never anticipated and facing a new, unexpected fate.

Director/Screenwriter: Nasrin Mohammadpour

Color, in Persian with English subtitles, 15 min.

GET TICKETS

---

Sunday, AugUST 24 – 6 pm

Seven Days – SOLD OUT

Germany, 2024

A human rights activist in Iran, Maryam (Vishka Asayesh) has been imprisoned for six years when she’s granted a seven-day medical leave. When he learns of this from exile with their two children in Germany, her husband (Majid Bakhtiari) arranges to have her smuggled across the border where they will meet her. What seems like an extraordinary chance for freedom becomes for Maryam a heartbreaking moral dillemma: rejoin her family, including her teenage daughter, or remain in solidarity with the political movement she joined to fight for her daughter’s future. Directed by Ali Samadi Ahadi and written by Mohammad Rasoulof, Seven Days is a raw, intense exploration of the cost of resistance and freedom.

Director: Ali Samadi Ahadi
Screenwriter: Mohammad Rasoulof
Cast: Vishka Asayesh, Majid Bakhtiari, Tanaz Molaei

Color, in Persian with English subtitles, 113 min.

Preceded By

The Dinner Party

Iran, 2023

Farhang Foundation Short Film Festival 3rd Prize Winner

Neda Jebelli makes her directorial debut with this penetrating short film about an engagement party that goes off the rails. Shooting entirely in the kitchen where a conservative mother tries to hold things together as the cake delivery is delayed by street protests outside and her daughter refuses to sit with her fiancé, Jebelli makes sharp use of off-screen space and sound to underscore a sense of sweeping societal chan

Director/Screenwriter: Neda Jebelli

Color, in Persian with English subtitles, 13 min.

GET TICKETS