Reading Lolita in Tehran | FKS

dir. Eran Riklis | Italy, Israel | 2024

Based on the bestselling autobiography of Azar Nafisi, the film is a poignant and still relevant story about women's solidarity, courage and the power of literature. Leading roles were performed by leading Iranian actresses — Golshifteh Farahani and Zar Amir Ebrahimi. 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 leads Azar Nafisi (Golshifteh Farahani), an ambitious literary 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.

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