MADRID – Iranian director Jafar Panahhi recently won the Cannes Film Festival with Palme de Or Haute, adding another international acclaim to his name.
The award reaffirms his prominent position in modern Iranian cinema. But alongside the celebration, there are unpleasant questions. To what extent do these films, praised in the West, perpetuate the orientalist visions that correspond to Western audience expectations and stereotypes about Iran?
Iranian cinema and western stereotypes
Iranian cinema has become a cultural phenomenon that accumulates prestigious awards across borders. However, Iran is the subject of simplified and reductive portrayal as part of a Muslim country and Western Asia, particularly in the Western media. Often negative and monolithic images repeat their own biases in a given awarded production.
Directors like Panahi, Asgal Farhadi, who won an Oscar for salesman in 2017, and the late Abbas Kiarostami, have been praised internationally as the most important voice of Iranian films. But many of their films seem to correspond to the expected narrative, conscious or not: social drama, oppression, one of cultural contradictions. This formula, although recognizable and powerful, runs the risk of trapping Iranian reality within a limited framework tailored to Western flavors.
Regardless of the intentions of the directors, the results are partial expressions that interfere with multiple voices within Iran. This phenomenon opens up important discussions about the limitations of cultural representation in a globalized world where media power and dominant ideology are told and how the stories are shaped.
Cultural theorist Stuart Hall shed light on this issue by analyzing how media construct meaning within political and ideological contexts. According to Hall, the message does not retain any fixed truth. They are encoded and deciphered under the conditions of dominant power and culture. Ideology therefore guides both the production and consumption of meaning, and shapes expressions that tend to support hegemonic interests.
In this context, the perceptions of Western Panah and other Iranian filmmakers reveal deep contradictions. Though their artistic talent is praised, their work often justifies fragmented, biased visions that are more consistent with Western political and cultural interests than Iranian reality. These films are far from offering faithful and pluralistic representations, and are carelessly aligned with external discourse that seeks to perpetuate the country’s image as a space of conflict and rearwardness, reinforcing simple stereotypes that distort Iran’s social and political complexity.
International applause therefore becomes part of an iconic game in which Iranian cinema is reduced to problematic exoticism and contributes almost to a true understanding of the country and its diversity.
Orientalism and its legacy
Influential Intellectual Edward said he emphasized the importance of mechanisms and attitudes in which the East is represented in the West through various depictions. In his inventive work Orientalism (1978), he argued that artistic works were often influenced by colonial discourse, and that these expressions served as tools for Western domination over the East and the Middle Eastern people, creating permanent divisions between the East and West.
The foregoing did not challenge the absolute truth of these depictions, but argued that it would help most people support specific colonial and political purposes.
After the attacks on September 11, 2001, the tendency to represent the Islamic world in terms of Islamophobia has become even stronger, aiming to create and strengthen spiritual stereotypes and naturalize the negative vision of the Middle East in global public opinion. The Muslim imagery in Western media has been reduced to clichés depicting them as “hypocritical, deceived, and even threatening” society. This is a simplification that unfortunately has permeated cultural production as well.
The role of self-direction
In this context, Ali Behadad, a leading critic of contemporary Orientalism, devoted much of his scholarship to analysing not only the Eastern representations by the West, but also the role of local artworks in constructing their own identity. Behdad coined the term “self-director” and described how artists and filmmakers in the region, including Iran, could replicate certain Western stereotypes in their works, often in order to gain recognition and legitimacy within the global circuit.
According to Behdad, the way the West presents and expresses Eastern and Islam has a critical influence on the formation of identity between Eastern and Muslims. This dynamic creates complex, sometimes contradictory relationships in which self-expression is mediated by external expectations and demands. Cultural identity is therefore shaped under the pressure of external gaze, defining which aspects are “visible” and remain invisible.
Applying this perspective to the Iranian directors mentioned above, it is clear that despite authentic storytelling claims, Panahi, Farhadi and Kiarostami presented images of Iran. Two recurring themes are strongly reflected in many of the work of women and Iranian society.
These elements tend to be constructed through images that are closely aligned with Western stereotypes about Iran, depicting a society characterized by oppression, trauma and silence. These portrayals fit the narrative framework that corresponds to what the West expects to ultimately be seen in Iranian cinemas.
A clear example is Farhadi’s The Salesman (2016). There, women are portrayed through stereotypes of passive victims trapped in the context of inequality and violence. This image, which frequently arises in Western media, reinforces Islam’s view as a “civilized, illogical, discriminatory” system, in contrast to the “civilized, enlightened West” defending gender equality.
This simple binary helps to maintain a sharp division that justifies hegemonic discourse while outlawing the internal complexities of Muslim society.
Globally recognized prices
The messages conveyed through films by Panahi, Farhadi and other Iranian directors can be understood as emerging in modern forms as manifestations of colonial discourse through the appearance and actions of the characters, as well as images of Iranian society. The perception and interpretation of the “the Eastern Self” in these works reflects the perception of the “the Eastern Other” depicted by the West.
This process is far from challenging the monolithic and reductive image of Iran and its complex society, resulting in the repetition and perpetuation of cliches and stereotypes.
Ultimately, the most acclaimed Iranian films in the West reveal not only the technical and narrative skills of the director, but also the submission to a global cultural market that limits the diversity of the story to the conditions. The persistence of self-direction in the works of Panahi, Farhadi and Kiarostami exposes an unpleasant paradox. To gain international prestige, these filmmakers will replicate Iran’s reductive, stereotypical vision and prioritize Western prejudices. Compliance with external demands is not merely an artistic accident, but a conscious choice that compromises the true complexity of Iranian society and multiple societies.