un gato de Ulthar

hello beautiful people in my phone. buckle down because this is a question you should never ask me unless you want the most annoyingly long answer ever. i want everyone who cares about movies. everyone who cares about the world and art. to watch farsi language movies all the time but very often i hear complaints that it's inaccessible. FUCK THAT every link on this list will be for absolutely goddamned free and all but two with english subs. okay cracks my knuckles here we go.

DISCLAIMER THOUGH! please please keep in mind that part of getting into iranian cinema is being bored because iranian cinema is meant to reflect the real world and our lives and part of life is being bored! american audiences are the ipad kids of the rest of the world i hope you know. but i digress. just know these are not going to be exciting movies or fun movies but you will ALWAYS walk away a different person if you pay attention

starting off with a modern classic! a separation (جدایی نادر از سیمین) 2011 dir. asghar farhadi is a great place for westerners to start i think. it was nominated for best original screenplay and won best foreign film in 2012 which is how you know even white people cared about it. i think this movie can act as a very good introduction for westerners into iranian media which is very often incredibly slow-paced and heavily influenced by ideas of morality specifically subjective morality (which very often americans find super boring and can't handle.) this movie i think does a great job of handling those themes while keeping the viewer interested the whole time. i haven't watched it since i was 13 i think but i remember it really blowing my little brain at the time. so im sure it still stands. on flixtor[dot]video with english subs!

secondly maybe The iranian movie of all time, children of heaven (بچه‌های آسمان) 1997 dir. majid majidi is probably one of the most famous iranian movies of all time because it was the first to be nominated for best foreign film. a lot of iranian movies are about children because children are the best way to explore the themes of life and morality because both of those things are so simple to them. this movie i think stands as the pinnacle of that. i watched this movie a lot growing up and my grown ass iranian father used to sob his eyes out every time we watched it. here it is on dailymotion with english subs

if you're interested in modern iranian history with intersectionality, i recommend the hidden half (نيمه پنهان) 2001 dir. tamineh milani! it tells the story of guerilla communist groups and socialist feminists in the revolutionary era. very very good movie about the way men perceive women with a lot of cool neglected history tied into it. sad though. like all iranian movies are. sorry fun fact very few of these movies are gonna have happy endings. here it is with english subs, use an adblocker!

basically abbas kiarostami is my best friend of all time. and you guys will never get him like me. but i want you to witness his incredible art anyway because holy shit does this man know how to make a movie. i think if you're into the tumblrina filmbro scene his movies will be the most familiar to you from this list, so i'll just knock a few out right here:

taste of cherry (طعم گيلاس) 1997 i think genuinely allows people who have never set foot in tehran to understand what it feels like to be there. on hbomax and also on youtube with english subs!

the traveler (مسافر) 1974 is kiarostami's first movie and. like bitches who have watched mean streets understand what im saying when i say that in a director's first work all their reoccurring themes are there they just havent realized their fullest potential yet? that's this movie. it's short and sweet (83 mins) and still an incredible watch and observes children in the converse way that most iranian movies do i think. which is very interesting. for the better call saul girlies out there. SORRY cannot find a link with english subs but if you understand farsi or read spanish!

close up (نمای نزدیک) 1990 hi close up my best friend and the movie of all time ever. you've heard of close up i know you have. the most incredible movie that mixes footage taken in real time and footage filmed after a real incident with actors that play themselves so the lines between fiction and reality almost entirely disappear. what can i say that hasn't already been said. just the movie ever. you know. youtube with english subs.

where is my friend's house? (خانه‌ی دوست کجاست؟) 1984 is another example of movies about children that really just break humanity down to the barebones. so goddamned good. part of a trilogy but start with this one. on flixtor[dot]video with english subs and also the criterion channel if your rich ass has a subscription

back towards themes of feminism mixed with themes of children: the mirror (آینه) 1997 dir. jafar panahi! in my letterboxd top four <3 i will not be saying anything about this movie just go in and watch it. women. u will understand. youtube with english and spanish subs

lastttt but not least for this list is gabbeh (گبه) 1996 dir. mohsen makhmalbaf. also used to be in my letterboxd top 4. cinematography fans will love this one. i dont even really remember the plot if we're being quite honest but god you don't even need subtitles just the movie is an experience. NEW LINK WITH SUBS!

that's the end of this list but i do have a list on letterboxd where i put farsi language movies, there's more on there and i do constantly add to it when i watch new ones! also please remember that farsi cinema goes beyond iran into tajikistan and afghanistan as well, with incredible movies like for example the silence and the patience stone! farsi is a language spoken many places and iran is incredibly ethnically diverse and there is so much good cinema displaying this. please give farsi language cinema a chance. we really have so much to show the world other than what they want you to see :)

The first was that each of us had attacked at least one of the others in print. I had dissed Eco’s book. Umberto had criticized Mario for being too right-wing. Mario had criticized me for being too left-wing.

The second discovery was that we all got on like a house on fire.

It was Umberto who suggested we should now call ourselves The Three Musketeers. (This, remember, was the time of the Three Tenors, Pavarotti, Domingo and Carreras.) I remember asking, “Why Musketeers? Why not, for example, The Three Stooges?”

“No,” Umberto insisted. “It has to be Musketeers, because first we were enemies and now we are friends.”

“One day the sadness will end.

But I don’t think today’s the day.”