financial times
By Monavar Khalaj

Iran s art-house cinema has won prizes all over the world and its realist sensibilities and rich language have been widely praised.

Directors such as Abbas Kiarostami (Ten and Taste of Cherry) and Jafar Panahi, pictured above, (White Balloon and Crimson Gold) have been celebrated and feted with prizes at film festivals such as Cannes.

But at home, filmmakers and critics are pessimistic about the future of Iran s industry. State policy has moved towards suppressing films with any intellectual pretensions, they say, promoting instead undemanding and lightweight dramas.

Matters are not helped by the widespread availability of DVDs, pirated and legitimate, of all the international and domestic hits. In Iran s cinemas, foreign films are generally banned and only those domestic ones that pass strict censorship are shown.

During the past five years, comedies have been the box-office successes. In the current Iranian year, which began on March 21, Poupak and Mash Mashallah, and Adam s Son and Eve s Daughter, head the list.

In the former, Poupak is a young woman who has grown up in Canada, and is visiting her aunt in Tehran. Mash Mashallah is a middle-aged, traditional Azeri man who works for the aunt. In Iranian films, Azeri people are usually seen as simple and prejudiced, especially in regard to religion and traditions.

The aunt falls ill and responsibility for taking caring of Poupak falls on Mash Mashallah. The film plays on the gulf between the two characters but shows Poupak accepted by, and accepting of, Iranian society.

Adam s Son and Eve s Daughter is a romantic comedy in which two young lawyers, a woman and a man who are professional rivals, are forced to share an office. After much bickering, love blossoms – albeit without overt displays of affection.

The question is whether such fare is sufficient to maintain support for a domestic industry that nurtured the talents of artists such as Mr Kiarostami and Mr Panahi.

The Association of Home Video, a non-governmental organisation, said in June that the number of tickets sold in cinemas has plummeted from 81m a year in 1989 to 8m in 2009.

Neither Adam s Son and Eve s Daughter and Poupak and Mash Mashallah has generated more than IR10bn ($952,000), according to local press reports and cinema web blogs.

The accolade for highest-grossing Iranian film of recent times goes to another comedy Ekharijiha II, meaning “The Outcast”.

The film is a sequel to a hit and is set among Iranian prisoners held in Iraq during the 1980-88 war. The comedy turns on the mainly working-class characters who demonstrate Iran s social and racial diversity. But media reports say the film made only IR38bn last year.

A reform-minded blogger describes these releases as “Khaliwood”. Khali means tediously empty.

Elham, a 27-year-old who works in the private sector, no longer goes to the cinema twice a week as previously. “I stopped going to the cinema six months ago [so as] not to waste my money and time,” she says, adding that good films have become increasingly rare since Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, the hardline president, took office in 2005.

Iran s filmmakers are dependent on the government because scripts must obtain the culture ministry s approval before production. “State-imposed cuts on movies have increased so much that reputable filmmakers do not see any room for manoeuvre,” says a critic.

Iranian filmmakers are largely dependent on private sources of funding. But government censorship is so pervasive that potential backers are nervous of funding anything contentious or even thoughtful, critics say.

Popular directors such as Bahram Beizaei, Daryoush Mehrjouei, Naser Taghvaei, Ahmad-Reza Darvish and Bahman Farmanara have largely been frozen out of funding.

Internationally celebrated directors are in a worse situation. Mr Kiarostami, Mr Panahi and Bahman Qobadi show their films only outside the country. Mr Panahi was jailed for three months this year for his support of Iran s opposition after last year’s disputed elections.

Yet some more thoughtful pieces have slipped through the net. Asghar Farhadi s About Elly, which won the Silver Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival, was screened in Tehran.

The film depicts a group of middle-class Iranians – three couples and an unmarried man and a single woman – who go on holiday to the Caspian Sea. As they try to uphold social customs, Elly, the single woman, disappears, presumed drowned, an event that leads to an examination of a repressive society.

Such a development is considered too little too late by many. Hassan Fathi, a well-known director, said two months ago that he would not even complain any more because “his hope of improvement is dashed”.

“Iran s cinema is facing an identity, cultural and economic crisis that began in the early 1990s,” Mohammad-Ali Zam, a film producer, wrote last month in the conservative newspaper Khabar.