Reading Lolita in Tehran
Leggere Lolita a Teheran
by
MOVIE CATEGORY
As Islamic morality squads stage arbitrary raids in Tehran and as fundamentalists seize hold of the universities, Azar Nafisi, an inspired teacher, secretly gathers six of her most committed female students to read forbidden western classics. Unaccustomed to being asked to speak their minds, they soon removed their veils, their stories intertwining with the novels they read: just like the heroines of Nabokov, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James or Jane Austen, the women in Nafisi’s living room dare to dream, hope and love as we experience the complexity of the lives of individuals facing political, moral and personal siege. Reading Lolita in Tehran is a remarkable exploration of women’s resilience in revolutionary Iran.
DIRECTORY
Eran Riklis has been directing, writing and producing fiction films, documentaries and TV series for more than 35 years. He graduated from the National Film School in Beaconsfield in the UK in 1982, after studying in Tel Aviv in the 1970s. He is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the European Film Academy and the Israeli Film Academy. He also had academic experiences in the United States. His film Cup Final (1991) marks his debut at major festivals, and in fact passed through Venice and Berlin; he arrives in Montreal and Locarno with The Syrian Bride (2004); he is the protagonist of the Toronto Film Festival with Zaytoun (2012). Reading Lolita in Tehran (2024) had its premiere at Rome Film Festival.
