Award-winning film-maker Maryam Keshavarz explores the unique art of Iranian cinema, revealing how filmmakers navigate censorship, exile, and artistic resistance.
Iranian-American film-maker Maryam Keshavarz explores the riddle of Iranian cinema - a world of creativity under restriction, where writers and directors find ways to speak despite censorship. Born in New York to Iranian parents, Maryam grew up moving between two cultures, smuggling pop culture into Iran for her cousins. That early experience - bridging the gap between freedom and limitation - shaped her storytelling and her understanding of identity.
After 9/11, Maryam saw how Iranian identities were misrepresented in Western media. And that urgency led her to film making and the coded layers of Iranian storytelling with its often hidden messages.
Maryam hears from a range of film-makers - Amarali Navaee, an Iranian director now living in Turkey; Hossein Molayemi and Shirin Sohani, Iranian animators who won an Oscar for the film In the Shadow of the Cypress; Babak Anvari who has just produced his second horror film; Sasha Nathwani who made the coming of age movie Last Swim, and Panah Panahi, an Iranian director still working in Iran, who offers a rare glimpse into film-making under constant surveillance.
Presenter: Maryam Keshavarz
A Made in Manchester production for the BBC World Service
(Photo: Actor Nagres Rashidi (C) and director Babak Anvari (R) on the film set of Under the Shadow which depicts Tehran during the Iran-Iraq war but was actually made in Jordan. Credit: Babak Anvari)
