ABSTRACT
The author observes the changes at the Fajr International Film Festival, her personal cultural marker, over annual attendances from 2001 to 2014. Starting with an incident from her first visit during the reformist era, when Manijeh Hekmat was threatened with imprisonment if she screened Women’s Prison for foreign guests, it describes the atmosphere that filmmakers known in the West, Kiarostami, Panahi, Milani, and Karimi among others, enjoyed in the early years, both at the government-approved festival and in their own environment. It moves through to Ahmadinejad’s second term, the years of the filmmaker boycott on Fajr, and concludes with 2014 when Rouhani had become president. In what was a full circle, after Rouhani came to power in 2014, screenings of banned films resumed; in the company of six, including Kiarostami and several foreign press, she attended another. This chapter discusses the nature of Iran’s national cinema model, the significance of the timeframe, and the intersection of the political and the filmic markers. The cinematic transformation that occurred in post-revolutionary Iran is introduced and contextualised, along with the intersection of policy and international reception, which were so conflicted in later years.
