ABSTRACT
As the reformist regime was interested in making Iranian cinema more appealing to the public, more things became permissible for filmmakers, leading to the growth of the social issues films from 2000. Although social issues films enjoyed the status of official recognition, the category was always going to be ‘troubled’, with significant constraints on content. Both Jafar Panahi and Pouran Derakshandeh have claimed, “I am a Social Issues filmmaker” and their respective career trajectories are considered in this context. A brief survey of films made between 2000 and 2013 follows, with an attempt to give a sense of recurrent topics, positioning films according to where they fall on the scale of government acceptability, and suggesting the unpredictable nature of individual decision on permits. Topics covered include the position of women (focusing on Tahmineh Milani and Rakshan Bani Etemad); legal issues – sharia law and Qisas (Asghar Farhadi and Niki Karimi); and political issues (Mohammad Rasoulof and Mohsen Makhmalbaf). Finally, it moves to a trend of filmmaking which has found increased tolerance by the government, although it is also used for unacceptable social critique – the middle-class family drama, the first prominent example of which is Farhadi’s About Elly.
