Movies: Shirin Neshat

Made for the Venice Film Festival's 70th anniversary, seventy filmmakers made a short film between 60 and 90 seconds long on their interpretation of the future of cinema....

Against the tumultuous backdrop of Iran's 1953 CIA-backed coup d'état, the destinies of four women converge in a beautiful orchard garden, where they find independence, solace and companionship....

Simin is an Iranian woman on a journey to discover what it means to be a free American. She works for the Census Bureau which, in an effort to control its citizens, has begun a program to record their dreams. Unaware of this devious plot, Simin is to...

A film within a film, "Looking for Oum Kulthum" is the plight of an Iranian woman artist/filmmaker living in exile, as she embarks on capturing the life and art of the legendary female singer of the Arab world, Oum Kulthum. Through her difficult jour...

Artist Shirin Neshat explains the film: "I was interested in how female singers are universally treated as objects of desire. At first, Cate looks gorgeous, but when she sings it's a [masculine] voice. The audience heckles her, and she becomes confro...

ILLUSIONS and MIRRORS is about the futile attempt of chasing a shadow that wanders through the dunes of an empty beach. When it finally comes to an encounter in a deserted house, the young woman experienced a disturbing surprise....

Four female artists have been politicized by experiences with war, violence and suppression and integrated them into their work, using their most personal tool: their own bodies....

The story of a young woman who has been working as a prostitute since childhood. The film traces her slow disintegration into psychic delirium. Wracked by both guilt for her actions and a strong desire for salvation, her madness manifests itself in h...

In Possessed, a seemingly mad woman in an Islamic village evokes questions of social acceptability....

The Colony, which shares the screen and the character of Shirin Neshat's Land of Dreams, is about an immense research institute devoted to recording and archiving the dreams of the local population....

Roja is drawn from Neshat’s own recurring dreams, memories and desires. The work traces a young woman’s disquieting attempts to connect with American culture while reconciling her identification with her home country of Iran....

This film is a rumination on cultural identity told through the viewpoint of a female photographer from Iran, traveling across the western US....

In a highly fictionalized and stylized way, Neshat’s new film addresses the sexual exploitation of female political prisoners by the Islamic Republic’s regime in Iran. Subjected to severe torture, sexual assault, including rape, it is commonly known ...

Her poetic two-channel video installation Tooba is based on the Koran, in which Tooba, the sacred tree of paradise, offers shelter and sustenance to those in need. Neshat's video places a woman within a groove in the trunk of a large fig tree, symbol...

Produced in collaboration with the American musical composer Philip Glass, Neshat’s narrative follows a procession of men as they carry a body through the desert to a grave that has been hand dug by women....

On one wall, a singer delivers a passionate love song to a group of men. He is faced away from his audience, secure that his performance will be accepted and adored. On the opposite wall, a woman in a black chador stands silently throughout his song....

In Sarah, 2016, it is a forest environment that becomes a site of haunting; mysterious and unknowable. The protagonist Sarah is played by Sara Issakharian, an Iranian-born artist....

Two-channel video installation by Shirin Neshat...

The installation features two black-and-white projections. One depicts a group of men dressed in Western suits and the other captures a group of women veiled in chador. In the work, Neshat takes on entrenched gender stereotypes by placing the men in ...

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