For women in Iran, life changed dramatically after the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

The new Islamic Republic of Iran enforced compulsory veiling, legalised polygamy, severely restricted women’s rights to divorce and child custody, lowered the minimum marriage age for girls, and gave husbands legal authority over their wives’ movements and sexual autonomy.

These conditions led to the 2022 Zan, Zendegi, Azadi (Woman, Life, Freedom) movement, triggered by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini. Amini died in September 2022 while in the custody of Iran’s morality police, after being detained for allegedly violating hijab regulations.

For more than 40 years, Iranian women filmmakers have documented and protested against these conditions. These seven film are essential viewing to understand their experiences, and the broader systems that enable them.

1. The Day I Became a Woman (2000)

Marzieh Meshkini shot her debut film, The Day I Became a Woman, more than 20 years before the Women, Life, Freedom movement.

Presented as a timeless contemporary tale, the film tells the stories of three Iranian women at different life stages – each constrained by the system at every turn.

A nine-year-old girl named Hava (Fatemeh Cherag Akhar) can no longer play with her male friend because Islamic law now considers her a “woman”.

A young wife, Ahu (Shabnam Tolouei), enters a bicycle race in defiance of her husband, and is pursued on horseback by the men of her tribe. This is among the most cinematically potent images in the Iranian feminist film movement: women on bicycles move forward through the asphalt of the modern world, while men on horses thunder across the sand behind them. During the film’s production, there were ongoing discussions regarding the permissibility of women cycling in public.

The third is an elderly woman, Hoora (Azizeh Sedigh), who finally spends her savings on all the household items and domestic goods she was denied throughout her life as a wife, mother........

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