By Variety | Created at 2026-09-05 06:10:52 | Updated at 2026-09-05 07:00:04
2 hours ago
With war still ravaging Iran — six months after the country was attacked by U.S. and Israeli forces — the Venice Film Festival is set to launch two Iranian films that will provide viewers vivid on-the-ground insight on the conflict’s societal impact as the country contends with bombs and its repressive regime.
Ali Asgari, who was in Venice Horizons last year with dark satire “Divine Comedy,” is set to return to the Lido — this time in competition — with “A Bit of Light,” a drama featuring “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” star Misagh Zareh as a doctor who loses faith in the future after being arrested by Iranian authorities and having his medical practice in Tehran shut down.
“This Trump guy is threatening to bomb here every day,” a person helping the doctor says in a key scene in “A Bit of Light.” “And these window panes are huge. God forbid they should shatter and hurt you.”
Then there is Mohsen Gharaei’s Horizons player “Falling House,” which follows a modest family on the outskirts of Tehran who face the imminent destruction of their home as part of a vast redevelopment project.
“Falling House” marks Gharaei’s follow-up to “Blockage,” which portrayed corruption in contemporary Iranian society and won best film at Busan in 2017, before going on to play at Rotterdam and Munich.
“Both films deal with this feeling of being trapped and what do you do when you’re inside a system where there’s really no way out?” says Oscar-winning producer Odessa Rae (“Navalny,” “The Voice of Hind Rajab”), who is a producer on “Falling House” and also served as an executive producer on “Bit of Light.”
“The regime is a part of the problem, and then the West’s solution becomes the other part of the problem,” adds Rae. “And when you’re faced with no way out, how do you behave? How does it transpire in your family? How does it transpire in the choices you make for yourself?”
These timely Iranian films were both shot surreptitiously in Iran in what Rae calls “the country’s final spurt of creativity before being battered by the war.”
To get permits to shoot “Falling House” in Tehran, the film’s lead producer Milad Khosravi — an Iranian who now runs his Seven Springs Pictures production company out of Istanbul — had to “manipulate the script that we gave to government,” he says. Then, after a roughly 70-day shoot, they got the footage out of Iran just before the war started and did the post-production, and a few additional scenes, in Germany.
Khosravi, who is also the lead producer on “A Bit of Light,“ says that when the U.S. first attacked Iran in February, physical production of Asgari’s new film had to be moved outside of the country. “We had a really complex situation shooting the film both in Tehran and Istanbul,” notes Khosravi, who adds that they wanted to “finish the film in a timely manner, so that it could make an impact.”
“We are happy to be launching both these very important films from the Venice Film Festival, so that we can use this important platform to expose the reality of what is happening in Iran,” says Khosravi.
Khosravi, Asgari and Gharaei, who are now living in exile outside Iran, will all be in Venice for their films‘’’ bows. But it’s very doubtful that they will be able to promote them in the U.S. due to the country‘s travel bans.
“I think right now with the current administration it’s going to be very hard to get them visas for the U.S.,” says Rae. Khosravi foresees that he will have the same problem.
That said, the producers have high hopes that “A Bit of Light” and “Falling House” will get U.S. distribution. CAA Media Finance is handling U.S. rights on “Falling House,” while Paradise City Sales is repping international sales. “A Bit of Light” is being sold globally by Salaud Morisset, which has already clinched deals in several countries including France (Haut et Court), Italy (Teodora Film Distribuzione) and Spain (La Aventura Cine).
Both Rae and Khosravi underline that “there won’t be another film on the scale of ‘Falling House’ coming out of Iran for years,” as Rae puts it. “Everything in Iran has been cracked down on,” she says.
“The Iranian cinema industry is big; we have a lot of amazing directors,” says Khosravi. “And I’m trying to bring these kinds of stories outside the country by financing them and supporting them thanks to amazing partners like Odessa. I am trying to keep this bridge between Iranian cinema, and global cinema and financiers and festivals, because I feel a responsibility to keep this cinema alive.”
