Maryam Tafakory creates an intimate inner world that moves between the concrete and the abstract. Layers of found and original footage are superimposed to fill in some of the cracks, the deletions, the limits of representation. Mast-del is a love song that would never pass through censorship.
After the revolution in 1979, Iran prohibited the depiction on the silver screen of men and women touching. Since then, directors have relied on every cinematic trick in the book to mirror ecstatic tension—but often the game of glances is enough to set a scene ablaze. Nazarbazi collages these intense cinematic moments into a poem about love and desire in Iranian film, which also echoes our own pandemic time of physical distancing.
Irani Bag is a split-screen video essay that questions the alleged innocence of handbags in post-revolutionary Iranian cinema. In doing so, Maryam Tafakory provides a robust political analysis of censorship and intimacy.
At the time of writing, early 2026, the situation in Iran is completely incomprehensible to the outside world, but above all, life-threatening for its inhabitants. The dream of an Iran post-Islamic Republic is not only part of the online discourse, but also of the protests on the streets. This is precisely what Iranian visual artist Saleh Kashefi depicts in their award-winning video And How Miserable is the Home of Evil: accompanied by an oppressive soundscape full of dissent, Iran’s Supreme Leader (finally) falls.
In 1962, beloved and controversial poetess Forugh Farrokhzad went to Azerbaijan and made her only short film: a portrait of a leper colony. The House is Black is an empathetic portrait that illuminates a world burdened by tragedy, yet sustained by community.
