Mo Abdi
Film critic
Mohammad Abdi is an Iranian journalist and film critic.
Film critic
Mohammad Abdi is an Iranian journalist and film critic.
A film with intimate scenes shot inside Iran premiered at the Berlin film festival this week, marking a new escalation in Iranian artists’ defiance of censorship at home.
Iran’s Fajr Film Festival went ahead this year as planned. But it did so in a country still reeling from bloodshed, and the red carpets beneath its guests carried a symbolic weight that many in the film community found difficult to ignore.
Looking back at Iranian films in 2025, one fact is hard to miss: it was underground cinema—not the country’s officially sanctioned productions—that defined the year internationally.
