ABSTRACT
The export market for cinema has long been officially and publicly regarded as important for its role in cultural diplomacy and its economic value. Iranian film policy makes this clear. Yet there is a major contradiction within Iranian government policy, reflecting the ideological differences between the government and the judiciary, and the fractured division of political power in all sectors – the insistence that Iranian cinema conform to an “Islamic” model alongside the seemingly incompatible goal of penetrating the global market. Between 2009 and 2013 this expectation became even more pronounced. This chapter considers Iranian official and unofficial participation in the non-Arab international festival marketplace. It moves to the efforts of independent filmmakers and distributors to position their work in the West and considers filmmaker response to festival participation. Moving from the definition of a “festival film” for Western audiences, festivals and sales agents explored in the previous chapter, this chapter examines the concept of the “festival film” from various Iranian perspectives, finally developing a set of descriptors, not mutually exclusive, that might describe the festival film from the Iranian point of view.
