Iranian cinema and a world through the eyes of a child

When the Iranian cinema industry redeveloped after its destruction during the 1979 Islamic Revolution, children’s films became a means through which to question the impact of new social forms, especially in relation to children’s subjectivities. This questioning encouraged a dual visual perspective that swung between a point of view that observes the child character and a child’s point of view that is constituted diegetically as a cognitive stance from which the world is perceived. The technique is employed in the industry’s three main areas: films for young children, films about children, and young adult films. Always subject to strict censorship, the films negotiate a narrow path between aesthetic pleasure and social critique. Initially, a cinema about boys, by the mid 1990s films admitted girls as major characters, and then, as funding for children’s films shrank, young adult films with a focus on youth agency became a major form.