Reading Lolita in Tehran

As Islamic morality squads stage arbitrary raids in Tehran and as fundamentalists seize hold of the universities in 1979, Azar Nafisi, an inspired teacher, secretly gathers six of her most committed female students to read forbidden western classics.

Unaccustomed to being asked to speak their minds, they soon removed their veils, their stories intertwining with the novels they read: just like the heroines of Nabokov, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James or Jane Austen, the women in Nafisi’s living room dare to dream, hope and love as we experience the complexity of the lives of individuals facing political, moral and personal siege.

Reading Lolita in Tehran is a remarkable exploration of women’s resilience in revolutionary Iran. This is a stirring, if conventionally-made story of courage and curiosity in the face of oppression.

Drama
Italy, United Kingdom (Persian, English) 1h 48m (108 min)