New Iranian Horror: Theorizing an Emerging Trend in Iranian Cinema

Abstract:

There is a notable shift in the films that are emerging from Iran today from the art-house films of the New Iranian Cinema that used to popu- late and dominate international film festivals with directors such as Kiarostami, Makhmalbaf, Panahi, Rasoulof, Bani-Etemad, Ghobadi, etc. Indeed, it is in this band of New Iranian Horror films where a vis- ible shift can be detected between the New Iranian Cinema of the mid 1990s and 2000s, with its unique style and recognizable conventions and these emerging films. In this presentation, I will delineate a group of films that have emerged in the aftermath of the 2009 mass protests in Tehran that deploy certain conventions of the horror genre as a pol- itically subversive critique of the claustrophobic, terrifying, and paranoiac atmosphere of post-2009 Iranian society, by theorizing the rise of a New Iranian Horror cinema that has appeared in the transnational circuitry from 2009 to the present.

Bio:

Dr. Farshid Kazemi is Sessional Lecturer at the School for the Contem- porary Arts, Simon Fraser University. He holds a PhD in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Edinburgh with a thesis on Iranian Cinema and Psychoanalysis. His research interests combine an interdisciplinary and theoretical approach to Film and Media Stud- ies, Iranian Studies, and Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies. His work has appeared in academic journals such as Camera Obscura, Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, and Iranian Studies. His book A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2021) is published by Liverpool University Press.