Pegah Ahangarani

Commissioned to mark the 60th anniversary of the Cannes Film Festival, "To Each His Own Cinema" brought together 33 of the world's pre-eminent filmmakers to produce short pieces exploring the multifarious facets of cinema and their perspective on the state of their chosen artform in the early 21st century.

Through five portraits of relatives and mentors, five expressions of resistance, Pegah Ahangarani sketches her life story. Drawing from personal archives, home videos, street protests footage, newspapers, and recorded voices, she retraces more than 40 years of Iran’s history. From the early days of 1979, until the war that began in 2026, she pieces together intimate and collective memories, forming the portrait of a country shaped by political repression and in constant hope for a revolution.

A hundred and fourteen famous Iranian theater and cinema actresses and a French star: mute spectators at a theatrical representation of Khosrow and Shirin, a Persian poem from the twelfth century, put on stage by Kiarostami. The development of the text -- long a favorite in Persia and the Middle East -- remains invisible to the viewer of the film, the whole story is told by the faces of the women watching the show.

Manijeh Hekmat's music-infused twist on a road movie follows a band's day-long journey across a flooded landscape to Tehran.

The film tells the story of three young people, each of whom sets out from Bandar Abbas to Tehran to achieve a goal.

Tomorrow is Samira's wedding ceremony and Bahar and Parisa are shopping excitedly. But at night somebody calls and tells them that the bride is dead and the wedding has been called off. They are both shocked and they cannot believe what they have heard, so they go straight to their friend's fiancé, Mansoor, to find out about the cause of her suspicious death.

Based on an ancient story Sang-e Sabor it's the story of a girl Nardaneh who one day hears a voice telling her that soon she will marry with a dead man. One day she enters a castle and in one of it's room finds a dead body with a book beside it. She begins to read the book and follows the instructions step by step.

Nearly three years have passed since the "Woman, Life, Freedom" protests in Iran. Many who took part in the 2022 (1401) demonstrations paid a heavy price: some were killed, many were permanently injured, others were sentenced to long prison terms, and many lost their jobs. Among the well-known figures who supported the protests was Taraneh Alidoosti, one of Iran’s most prominent film actresses. After she posted an unveiled photo of herself and later protested the execution of Mohsen Shekari, she was imprisoned. Following her release, she became ill and remained out of the public eye for some time. Alidoosti has also been banned from acting in cinema. For the first time, in the documentary Taraneh, produced by Pegah Ahangarani, Alidoosti speaks about her decision to join the protest movement after the killing of Mahsa Amini. She talks about the day she was arrested at home in front of her little daughter and about the loss of her skin due to an autoimmune disease.