As state-imposed internet shutdowns continue to silence Iranians, the festival renews its commitment to amplifying those voices, offering Australian audiences a way to engage with these realities beyond the news cycle.
The 12th PFFA opens with Cutting Through Rocks, an Oscar-nominated documentary following the first Iranian woman elected as a rural village councilwoman as she challenges child marriage and advocates for women’s rights against fierce backlash.
The festival will close with Sunshine Express, a debut allegorical thriller in which a fake game show exposes the mechanics of authoritarian complicity.
“For those who come to our screenings,” the festival states, “whether you carry Iran in your blood, your memory, or simply in your conscience, we offer a place to gather, to witness together, and to remember that storytelling is itself an act of resistance.”
OPENING FILM: Cutting Through Rocks (2025) | Dir. Sara Khaki & Mohammadreza Eyni
Nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 98th Academy Awards, Cutting Through Rocks is a documentary following Sara Shahverdi, the first Iranian woman elected as a rural village councilwoman, as she pushes to reform her community, challenging child marriage, advocating for female land ownership, and teaching girls to ride motorcycles against fierce backlash from the very system she was elected to serve. The film won the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize for Documentary at Sundance 2025.
Having just won that prize at Sundance, Sara Khaki told Irresistible, “This is a film that’s we have worked on for the past seven years. We walked into this journey of filmmaking together, living with this story that is very, very vital and important and needed to be told. We believe in the story and the voice of Sarah and what she’s doing in her village – for herself, for the women, and for the girls there. We deeply believed in that, and we knew that no matter how long we should wait it would be worth it.”
During the interview Mohammadreza Eyni then added, “We are so happy because we were so patient in the process of making this film and being with Sara Shahverdi the main character for so long. She believed in us and also we believed in her. We thought that we are doing something very crucial and very important, and now we are happy that the film and the story is being recognized by audiences and by juries and by people everywhere. It means that the film’s message and the story is going to connect with many other people in the world, especially with women, and we are very happy about that.”
Enyi went on to say, “I had the privilege of working with two strong women, Sara Khaki as a director and Sara Shahverdi as the film’s character, so yes, it was amazing.”
Sara Khaki then did the big reveal. The love story at the centre of the filmmaking and behind the camera.
“ I have to say that over the seven year journey of making this film,” Khaki said, “we got married. So this is a celebration of our marriage as well.”
Beyond the opening and closing nights, the 2026 edition presents a full program of features and short films competing for the festival’s Golden Gazelle Award, presented by a jury including Kriv Stenders, Erik Thomson, Amanda Brown, Brietta Hague and Yasmin Kassim to the best films across the festival.
Shot without permission by banned filmmaker Mahnaz Mohammadi, and from a screenplay written inside Evin Prison, Roya was a standout of Berlinale 2026.
Roya, an Iranian teacher imprisoned in Tehran’s Evin Prison for her political beliefs, is faced with a choice: make a forced televised confession or remain confined to her three-square-metre cell. As past and present slip out of sequence and exchange places, she moves between inner landscapes and lived experience. The film reveals how solitary confinement reshapes both perception and identity and makes the possibility of resistance increasingly fragile.
Between Dreams and Hope (2025) | Dir.
This bold queer love story from director Farnoosh Samadi premiered in the Platform section at the Toronto International Film Festival 2025.
Azad (trans man) and Nora are two young lovers fighting between tradition and modernity in their society and family that create great problems for them, but despite all the hardships, they have dreams, hope and love for life.
The Things You Kill (2024) | Dir.
This surreal psychological thriller by Alireza Khatami was winner of Best Director at Sundance 2025.
Haunted by the suspicious death of his ailing mother, Ali, a university professor coerces his enigmatic gardener to execute a cold-blooded act of vengeance. As long-buried family secrets resurface, the police tighten their noose, and doubts begin eroding his conscience. Ali has no choice but to look into the abyss of his own soul.
A banned filmmaker and his producer attempt an underground screening in defiance of censorship. Premiered at Venice Film Festival and nominated for the Venice Horizons Award.
Bahram is a 40-year-old filmmaker who has spent his entire career making films in Turkish- Azeri, none of which have ever been screened in Iran. His latest work, once again denied permission by the Ministry of Culture, pushes him to the edge of defiance. With his sharp-tongued, Vespa-riding producer Sadaf by his side, he embarks on an underground mission to showcase his film to an Iranian audience — dodging government censors, absurd bureaucracy and his own self-doubts.
A spare, intimate portrait of exile and ritual by director Abdolreza Kahani which was winner of the Sean Connery Prize at the Edinburgh International Film Festival.
A reclusive mortician who has been tasked with washing the bodies of recently deceased ex-pat Iranians in Canada. His world is turned upside down when he receives an unusual request from a dissident singer in hiding.
Short Films Session
A SIGHT OF HER by Hediye Khaniyan
FARSI WITH MAMAN by Omid Iranikhah
ITALIANO by Mehdi Davachi
LEILI’S PHOTO by Maral Mostafavi
LIKE FRIEND, LIKE DEER by Malek Eghbali
SUMMER TRIANGLE by Maryam Esmaeili, Ali Babai
THE TORTOISE by Amir Reza Jalalian
WIND by Moeinoddin Jalali
Tara Aghdashloo on the curation of the short film programme
While today Iran is invoked across headlines and images saturated with violence, statistics, and geopolitics, Iranian people have always sought to be seen beyond these frames. The cinema of Iran, despite years of censorship, sanctions, and economic hardship, remains among the best in the world. I’m honoured to curate this selection of short films: some take bold formalistic risks, some are earnestly humorous, or profoundly poetic. They display the humanity of Iranians, their diversity, pains and hopes — whether through intricately designed animation, or set simply in an audition room, a girl arranging a family photo, or the adventures of two friends fleeing their beloved home. While the world fixates on news coming out of Iran, it is more important than ever to understand the breadth of imagination and beauty of this ancient land and its people.
CLOSING FILM: Sunshine Express (2025) | Dir.
The debut feature from Iranian director and choreographer Amirali Navaei premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam.
A group of strangers boards the Sunshine Express, to compete for a cash prize on an immersive role-playing train journey promising self-transformation and a mythical fictional paradise destination called Hermia. What begins as a playful game quickly turns unsettling as the crew imposes strict rules, demands emotional obedience, and blurs the line between performance and control. As the passengers question what is real, they become trapped in a psychological experiment that exposes how easily people surrender their freedom when offered purpose, belonging, or escape.
A striking allegorical thriller about complicity, coercion, and how authoritarian systems sustain themselves through the willing participation of those they oppress.
Rounding out the program with a special screening and a tribute to the late filmmaker, is The Stranger and the Fog (1974, Dir. Bahram Beyzaie), one of the great works of the Iranian New Wave, banned after the revolution.
In a remote Iranian village, a boat arrives with a wounded man, Ayat, who has amnesia. Widow Ra’na is interested in him, causing family tensions. Villagers ask Ayat to marry, but he chooses Ra’na, leading to trouble.
Impossible to see for decades and presented in a new digital restoration from the original camera negative, The Stranger and the Fog is an endlessly symbolic tale in which uncontrollable forces of nature, superstition, ritual and violence disorient the viewer in exhilarating ways. In the film’s meticulously structured circular narrative, characters, times and spaces rhyme and mirror one another, turning filmmaking into an act of dreaming. Characters are the products of one another’s imaginations, and eventually all become myth. The film cedes the centre of both desire and control to a woman of will, breaking through the strictures of victimised women presented in many Iranian films of the 1970s.
FESTIVAL CALENDAR
DATE | TIME | FILM TITLE |
Thursday 16 April | 6:30pm | Cutting Through Rocks |
Friday 17 April | 6:45pm | Roya |
8:45pm | Between Dreams and Hope | |
Saturday 18 April | 1:30pm | The Stranger and the Fog |
4:30pm | The Things You Kill | |
6:30pm | Divine Comedy | |
8:30pm | The Mortician | |
Sunday 19 April | 2:00pm | Short Films Session |
5:30pm | Sunshine Express |
Persian Film Festival
16 April to 19 May
Palace Cinema Moore Park, Sydney
Tickets and full program: www.persianfilmfestival.com
