Reading Lolita in Tehran

This program is presented by the UCLA Film & Television Archive. Part of the UCLA Film & Television Archive screening series 2025 UCLA Celebration of Iranian Cinema.

Filmmaker Elahe Esmaili has stopped wearing a hijab, an act of liberation her parents seem resigned to while she helps them pack up their home. They are decidedly less so when she joins them and their extended family at an Eid celebration, fearing what their relatives will think. In this deftly framed personal documentary, Esmaili captures the multigenerational clash of tradition and change felt by families across Iran. 

DCP, color, in Persian with English subtitles, 27 min. Director: Elahe Esmaili.

Based on Azar Nafisi’s New York Times Best Seller memoir, this sweeping story of perseverance and resistance follows a literature professor (Golshifteh Farahani) from her return to Tehran with her husband in 1979 during the brief window of optimism after the Iranian Revolution through to her eventual exile again in 1997. In between, Nafisi began a book salon in her home that became a refuge for like-minded women watching their rights, professions and freedoms stripped away. Daisy Miller, Pride and Prejudice and, of course, Lolita, along with other Western classics offered the frameworks through which they could make sense of their situation and find the courage to survive it. Brought to the screen by an all-star cast, Nafisi’s story remains as timely and inspiring as ever. 

DCP, color, in Persian with English subtitles, 108 min. Director: Eran Riklis. Screenwriter: Marjorie David. With: Golshifteh Farahani, Zar Amir Ebrahimi, Mina Kavani.