Film critic
Looking back at Iranian films in 2025, one fact is hard to miss: it was underground cinema—not the country’s officially sanctioned productions—that defined the year internationally.
Independent Iranian films, made without permits and often in open defiance of compulsory hijab rules, dominated major festivals and prize lists.
The clearest signal came at Cannes, where the Palme d’Or crowned an underground Iranian production, sealing 2025 as an exceptional year for dissident cinema.
By contrast, Iran’s official films—produced with licences and strict ideological constraints—largely failed to gain traction abroad.
The standout was A Simple Accident by Jafar Panahi, which not only won the Palme d’Or but went on to become one of the most prominent titles of the global awards season, with realistic prospects at the Oscars and Golden Globes.
Youth, society and refusal
Many of the year’s most striking films explored Iranian society through the eyes of a younger generation increasingly at odds with official norms.
Sunshine Express by Amir-Ali Navaei, screened in the main competition at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, rejected conventional storytelling in favour of a disquieting, abstract journey that mirrors the layered complexity of contemporary Iran.
Also at Rotterdam, Jamaat by Sahand Kabiri, shown in the “Bright Future” section, sought to reclaim parts of Iran’s social history long absent from official cinema, offering an unvarnished portrait of a generation that openly rejects prescribed rules.
Berlin hosted A Thousand and One Frames by Mehrnoush Alia, an underground film made inside Iran featuring women without compulsory hijab. Its freer visual space aligns with its themes, even as such work risks being weaponised by hardliners who have long labelled Iranian cinema “corrupt”—a charge historically used to justify censorship and control.
Venice screened two underground social films: Divine Comedy by Ali Asgari, which uses subtle humour to depict the frustrations of filmmaking under censorship, and Inside Amir by Amir Azizi, a portrait of Tehran’s underground life.
Tehran on screen
Several films offered stark depictions of Tehran today.
Bidad by Soheil Beiraghi won the Special Jury Prize at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. It follows Sati, a Gen Z woman barred from singing publicly, who ultimately takes to the streets—turning personal defiance into a metaphor for a generation demanding its rights in public space.
Ali Behrad’s Tehran, Be With You, also screened at Karlovy Vary, presents an uncompromising portrait of young life in the capital and remains banned inside Iran.
Duality by Abbas Nezam-Doost (Tallinn) and Between Dream and Hope by Farnoush Samadi (Toronto) similarly set out to document everyday life in contemporary Tehran from different angles.
Experimentation and exile
Formal experimentation also marked the year. Shahram Mokri’s Black Rabbit, White Rabbit, shot in Tajikistan, sidesteps Iran’s restrictions and extends his signature style of long takes, interlocking narratives and circular storytelling.
Ali Farahmand’s debut Only the Voice Remains, screened in Beijing, is a black-and-white, dialogue-free work dense with cinematic references.
Filmmakers in exile were equally visible. Abdolreza Kahani’s The Mortician, shot on a mobile phone, stood out at the Edinburgh festival, following an Iranian mortician in Canada with ambiguous ties to the Iranian embassy.
Depth of Night by Farhad Vilkiji revisited Iran’s chain murders, while Sepideh Farsi screened her documentary Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk on Palestine at Cannes.
Memory and documentary
Themes of revolution and memory surfaced in Ah, What Happy Days They Were by Homayoun Ghanizadeh, premiered in Tallinn, which brings together Ali Nassirian, Navid Mohammadzadeh, Peyman Maadi, Golshifteh Farahani and Shirin Neshat in a fragmented conversation linking family history to revolution.
Documentary cinema also fared strongly. Saeed Nouri’s Tehran: An Unfinished History, assembled from pre-revolutionary films, screened at Rotterdam.
Mehrdad Oskouei won best film at IDFA for The Moon and the Pink Fox, about an Afghan girl in Iran seeking to reach Europe, while The Past Is a Continuous Future by Firoozeh Khosravani also received an IDFA prize.
Together, these films offered a portrait of Iranian cinema in 2025 that was defiant, experimental and overwhelmingly shaped by voices working beyond the state’s boundaries.
Doctors working in public and private psychiatric hospitals told Tehran-based daily Etemad that they are seeing growing numbers of patients with no prior mental illness who develop severe psychotic symptoms after using narcotics and synthetic stimulants.
Many require emergency hospitalization, and some go on to develop lasting psychiatric disorders.
A senior psychiatrist at a 100-bed psychiatric hospital in southwest Tehran said that typically 15 to 20 percent of inpatient beds are occupied by patients admitted after drug-induced psychosis.
“Acute symptoms mean a crisis – self-harm, violence toward others, suicidal behavior, severe delusions and hallucinations,” the doctor said, adding that most arrive in an aggressive and disoriented state.
“These patients must often be physically restrained during transfer because they pose an immediate danger to themselves and others,” the psychiatrist said, noting that many families cannot afford private ambulances and that treatment costs are not covered by insurance.
Teens increasingly at risk
The most troubling shift is the age profile, doctors say. While hospitals previously treated mostly adult men, adolescents now make up a growing share of emergency admissions.
“More than half of pediatric psychiatric admissions are teenagers who have used heavy substances,” one psychiatrist said, adding that cannabis derivatives are now “circulating like chewing gum” among youths.
Another doctor described a rise in cases involving homemade drug mixtures and hallucinogens such as LSD and mushrooms. “Some teenagers believe they are entering a spiritual world,” he said. “Instead, they arrive with persistent hallucinations that can last for years.”
A resident psychiatrist at a public hospital said that in the past year, 10–20% of emergency psychiatric visits involved first-time psychosis triggered by drug use. “Some test negative for substances by the time they reach us, yet they are hallucinating and delusional,” he said. “Even if symptoms subside after treatment, continued drug use puts them at high risk of developing chronic disorders.”
Warnings of long-term fallout
Stimulants such as methamphetamine and cocaine sharply increase the risk of severe behavioral changes, Mohammadreza Shalbafan, head of mental health and addiction at the Iranian Ministry of Health told Etemad. “These reactions are not limited to people with a psychiatric history,” he said. “No drug user is immune.”
Toxicologist Kambiz Soltaninejad, speaking at a medical workshop in September 2025, warned that high-potency cannabis strains pose the greatest risk. “With teenage use rising, we should expect a schizophrenia tsunami in the near future,” he said.
Advocacy groups say the warnings confirm what they have long observed. Rising use of hallucinogens has already pushed hospital admissions higher, Tayebeh Dehbashizadeh, head of the Association for the Support of Schizophrenia Patients said.
“Global estimates suggest one percent of any population has schizophrenia,” she said. “In Iran, that number is climbing.”
Doctors caution that hospital data capture only the most severe cases. “We are seeing just the tip of the iceberg,” one psychiatrist said. “Many more are deteriorating quietly at home, unnoticed – until it’s too late.”
Cases that haunt clinicians
Doctors interviewed by Etemad described cases that continue to trouble them years later. One psychiatrist recalled a 27-year-old man who developed vivid, shifting hallucinations after consuming a small amount of psychedelic mushrooms. He remained trapped in a fantasy world for nearly two years before briefly regaining clarity, only to spiral into severe post-traumatic stress and later schizophrenia after renewed stress, requiring lifelong treatment.
Another case involved a 16-year-old girl from a family affected by addiction, who began injecting drugs in early adolescence. She was admitted after fearing a fatal overdose and asking for help but disappeared days after being discharged from a pediatric ward.
“No one knows what happened to her after she walked out of the hospital,” a doctor said.
Clinicians also described patients who returned repeatedly after discharge, only to die from overdoses weeks later. “Some survive the psychosis, but not the next relapse,” one psychiatrist said. “That is the most devastating part.”
The Grand Bazaar, one of Tehran’s most important commercial and historic areas, is facing a crisis that has developed below ground rather than at street level.
Iranian media reported the discovery of excavations beneath the Azadi (Dastmalchi), Ziba and Naderi caravanserais within Tehran’s Grand Bazaar in the capital city's downtown.
Given that the buildings are physically interconnected, damage to one structure can affect the others.
Size and extent of excavations
No official measurements have been released on the length or size of the underground spaces.
Tehran-based Payam-e Ma reported that unknown excavators had dug a deep and narrow tunnel covering about 5,000 square meters beneath the Grand Bazaar, close to the historic core of central Tehran. The report did not cite a source for the figure.
The estimate was attributed elsewhere to a bazaar shopkeeper identified as Mr. Fili, who was quoted by the semi-official ISNA as saying the operation included around 5,000 underground spaces and nearly 12 exit points, making the work easier to conceal.
When did the work begin?
Mohammad Amini, mayor of Tehran’s District 12, said the illegal construction likely began in the mid-2010s and continued until the end of last year.
If accurate, the timeline raises questions about how such large-scale activity could have gone undetected by municipal and oversight bodies for years.
Some Tehran bazaar traders have disputed that assessment.
One long-time shopkeeper told Iran International that continuous police monitoring makes any nighttime activity in the bazaar without official permits effectively impossible.
Another shopkeeper said that due to oversight by municipal authorities, police and cultural heritage bodies, bringing any construction materials into the bazaar — even a single bag of cement — requires official approval.
Amini said no new violations have been reported since the issue was identified sometime between late March and mid-April this year.
It remains unclear why the municipality did not publicly address the issue earlier, despite being aware of the violations since then.
Purpose of the excavations
Officials say the main aim of the excavations was to create a new underground level, likely intended for storage or commercial use outside formal oversight.
Ali Nasiri, head of Tehran’s Crisis Management Organization, said a new level had been created within part of the building foundation without technical feasibility or structural resistance.
The Research Center of the Ministry of Roads, Housing and Urban Development, the body responsible for assessing building safety, said technical inspections showed the caravanserais had become structurally unstable.
Official reports cite damage including distorted ceilings and weakened or warped columns.
The Fire Department and the Crisis Management Organization said about 1,000 shops operate in the affected area, employing roughly 3,000 people on a permanent basis.
Authorities estimate that 5,000 to 6,000 people pass through the area daily and have warned that any incident could lead to a major human disaster.
Who is responsible?
Despite judicial orders and confirmation that violations occurred, authorities have not disclosed the identities of those responsible for the excavations.
City officials say individuals seeking to profit from the project have been identified and the case is under investigation, but no further details have been made public.
Some shopkeepers and experts continue to question how a project of this scale could have continued for months or years in one of Tehran’s busiest areas.
“The fight against narcotics and alcoholic beverages must be a priority, because the enemy is using these areas as tools to undermine security and strike at society,” Mohammad Movahedi said at a meeting of senior judiciary officials.
Speaking at a session focused on security and judicial coordination, Movahedi warned that after failing to achieve their aims through military confrontation, Iran’s enemies were shifting toward what he described as efforts to foment social dissatisfaction and ethnic tension.
He stressed the need for vigilance, closer cooperation with the public, and what he called “people-based intelligence” to counter internal threats.
Movahedi also urged tougher action against smuggling and economic corruption, called for stronger border controls including the expansion of X-ray screening at customs points, and highlighted the importance of reducing prison populations through alternatives to incarceration for non-security offenses.
Alcohol is illegal in Iran under Islamic Republic law and carries penalties including fines, flogging and imprisonment, but it is widely consumed.
Despite periodic crackdowns, homemade and smuggled alcohol remains common, particularly in large cities, and alcohol poisoning outbreaks linked to illicit production have repeatedly highlighted the gap between strict legal bans and social reality.
