Screenshot - New Iranian Cinema
For more than six decades, in the face of censorship and even imprisonment, Iranian filmmakers have produced some of the world’s best-loved cinema. And now, with the legendary Iranian director Jafar Panahi’s latest film It Was Just An Accident up for Oscar and BAFTA Awards, Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode review this extraordinarily rich and unique cinema history.
Mark speaks to the British-Iranian director Babak Anvari about his supernatural-thriller film Under the Shadow, inspired by his experiences growing up during the Iran-Iraq War, and how and why Iranian cinema has had such a huge impact on film culture.
Ellen talks to Sepideh Farsi, who was forced to leave Iran for Paris as a teenager, about her 2009 documentary, Tehran Without Permission, which she made entirely independently on a Nokia cameraphone.
And Ellen also meets Hassan Nazer, an Aberdeen-based Iranian director who came to the UK as a refugee and whose 2022 film Winners is a love-letter to his country’s film-making tradition.
Producer: Artemis Irvine
A Prospect Street production for BBC Radio 4
Published on Friday, 30th January 2026.
Available Podcasts from Screenshot
We are not the BBC, we only list available podcasts. To find out more about the programme including episodes available on BBC iPlayer, go to the Screenshot webpage.