Reading Lolita in Tehran, a new film by Eran Riklis

 Last night, I had the opportunity to attend the Jerusalem premiere screening of Reading Lolita in Tehran, directed by Eran Riklis, based on the best-selling memoir of the same name by Azar Nafisi (published in 2003 and translated into 32 languages). 

Eran Riklis is one of Israel’s most prominent filmmakers. He has made multiple award-winning political films – Cup Final, Zaytun, Syrian Bride, Shelter,Lemon Tree, Dancing Arabs, Human Resources Manager -- all previously reviewed on this blog.

Reading Lolita in Tehran is an extraordinary portrayal of life in Iran during the period following the Islamic Revolution.  The film is sensitive and complex, and the characters are compelling. The story centers on the oppression of women, the banning of Western classics, and the under-lying tension of living with the fear of the knock on the door.

Our main character is the character of Azar Nafisi, herself.  Eran Riklis is obviously attracted to defiant, politically conscious Middle Eastern women – as we have seen previously in Lemon Tree, Shelter, Syrian Bride. Here, Azar is a professor of English literature at the university in Tehran, having recently returned home from America with her husband, both of them optimistic about the possibility of a new life in post-revolutionary Iran.

According to a review by Arash Azizi in The Atlantic, Nafisi’s “book isn’t just about reading and teaching literature under a repressive regime, but about how literature in and of itself could serve as an antidote to all that the regime stood for.” After the crackdown on books and foreign studies, and the oppression of women becomes insufferable, Azar begins to hold a class in her living room for a small group of her female students.  That underground group becomes the center of the film’s story. They talk about literature, about the books’ characters and how they represent things in their own lives. They discuss whether or not their lives could be better elsewhere. They talk about their husbands and their petty jealousies. They console each other and understand each other in a way no man could possibly understand.

According to the filmmaker (who spoke at the  screening last night,) making this film appear authentic was a particular challenge and he decided to use all Iranian actresses (obviously all of them are living abroad). Golshifteh Farahani, who plays Azar, for example, was told to leave Iran in 2008, after a part she played in a controversial film. Perhaps remarkable in itself, all seven of the actresses playing the women in the study group which met in Azar’s living room, attended the world premiere screening at the Rome Film Festival in 2024.

Only a few years after protests rocked Iran under the title “Women, Life, Freedom,” this film provides viewers with an insider’s look at the complexity of life in Iran, especially with regard to  the oppression of women and the resistance of some women to this phenomenon.   It also reminds us all of what it is like to live in an extremely repressive society.

When asked why he made this film as an Israeli film director, Riklis told the audience that he did so as any film director would choose to examine universal human issues.

Watch herethe film’s trailer.

Reading Lolita in Tehran is now playing at cinemas throughout Israel. (The film speaks English and Parsi, with Hebrew subtitles.)