Hossein Daneshavar

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The fates of a madman, a homeless woman, a print shop worker and a playboy are intertwined in the days leading up to Persian New Year. Toofan, an uncategorisable film which moves freely between horror and comedy; documentary, musical and sci-fi, was the first production of Khachikian’s own studio, Azhir Film. After the censor banned Khachikian from making a film about the first serial killer of the modern era in Iran, he turned to one of his own stories, exploring his preferred themes of compassion and evil. Shot both in the studio and on location, it features a memorable sequence of Bonfire Wednesday and a ruin which was rumoured to be a former Qajar era torture dungeon.

A fine example of the female-led melodramas of the 1950s that revived Iranian cinema after a long hiatus during WWII, The Last Night follows Monir, a happily married woman who gets blackmailed by her former lover and must rely on an actress to clear her name. There’s a striking sense of 1950s Iranian cosmopolitanism, especially when the camera leaves the studio and ventures into the streets of Tehran or the ski resorts in the north of the city.