Reading Lolita in Tehran

🎬 OFFSCREEN CINEMA
Directed by: Eran Riklis
Cast: Golshifteh Farahani, Zar Amir Ebrahimi, Mina Kavani, Reza Diako

After the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979, the streets of Tehran are patrolled by moral defenders and fundamentalists take control of universities. Women have to wear the hijab, their freedoms are restricted, and reading Western literature becomes an act of rebellion. This situation causes Azar Nafisi (Golshifteh Farahani), an ambitious literature lecturer, to quit her job at Tehran University. The woman secretly begins to invite a group of the most committed female students to her home. Together they read the forbidden classics of Western literature — Vladimir Nabokov's “Lolita”, F. Scott Fitzgerald's “The Great Gatsby”, the novels of Henry James and Jane Austen. At first, shy young women gradually open up — sharing dreams, fears, love stories and humiliations associated with living in a totalitarian regime.