Film critic
Iran’s Fajr Film Festival went ahead this year as planned. But it did so in a country still reeling from bloodshed, and the red carpets beneath its guests carried a symbolic weight that many in the film community found difficult to ignore.
Some chose not to attend. Others did, and the result was a festival that felt unusually detached from the public mood—less a national cultural event than a carefully managed display of continuity.
Now in its 44th year, the festival took place less than forty days after tens of thousands of protesters were killed during the government’s crackdown. Under those circumstances, the decision to proceed on schedule was bound to draw scrutiny.
The nature of the festival itself has evolved over time, with an increasing share of films produced by state institutions or affiliated organizations. This year, too, such bodies as municipal authorities and even the judiciary appeared among the producers.
This has contributed to a growing perception, particularly among independent filmmakers, that the festival increasingly reflects official priorities rather than the diversity of Iranian cinema.
That perception was reinforced by a number of high-profile absences. Some directors and actors announced they would not attend.
The actor Elnaz Shakerdoost, one of Iran’s most recognizable performers, publicly questioned the timing of the festival and announced she would step away from acting. “Which festival? Which celebration?” she wrote. “I will not attend any celebration, nor will I ever again play a role in this land that smells of blood.”
Other films were screened without their directors or cast present. In several cases, producers appeared alone at press conferences. The director Soroush Sehat and the cast of his widely discussed film declined to attend altogether, leading organizers to cancel its press session.
These absences altered the character of the festival’s public discussions. Press conferences often featured only those filmmakers who had chosen to participate, some of whom criticized colleagues who had stayed away.
Mohammad Hossein Mahdavian, a director known for films focusing on Iran’s security institutions, described actors who declined to attend as “cowards.”
Many film critics and journalists opted not to cover the event. Even Film Emrooz, a long-established cinema magazine known for its cautious editorial line, did not publish its customary festival issue.
Public turnout appeared subdued as well. Organizers sought to maintain the appearance of normal activity, but attendance remained visibly lower than in previous years.
The closing ceremony reflected similar tensions. Several winners did not appear to accept their Simorgh awards. President Massoud Pezeshkian attended and praised those who had participated, signaling the government’s continued investment in the festival’s symbolic importance.
One award recipient attempted to acknowledge the broader context, alluding to the recent violence while accepting his prize. His remarks, however cautiously phrased, underscored the gap between the official narrative of continuity and the unresolved trauma still shaping public life.
Iran’s film industry has long occupied a complex position—both an instrument of national identity and a space for independent artistic expression. This year’s festival highlighted how difficult it has become to sustain that balance.
Iran’s internet, throttled for 20 days during January’s mass killing of protesters, has been restored since earlier this month, but remains unstable, with VPNs and other censorship-bypassing tools now far harder to access than before the shutdown.
“The internet is not stable enough for me to confidently take on projects, and transferring money has become so complicated that the losses outweigh the income,” one electrical engineer working as a freelancer told Iran International, speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons.
Iranian entrepreneurs and freelancers are mostly shut out of global platforms and payment systems due to US sanctions, forcing them to depend on expensive workarounds that put their businesses at risk.
The engineer said that before the shutdown, earnings depended on the size and complexity of each contract.
“If the project was small or academic, the hourly rate was around $50. Larger and more complex projects would pay between $1,000 and $1,500 in total,” he said. “The number of projects per month varied, but overall I had a good level of income.”
That stability has eroded amid repeated disruptions and mounting financial barriers, he said.
“Inside Iran there is no industry where I can find work in my field. It’s complete confusion.”
An online translator who works with overseas agencies described similar disruption.
“When the connection cuts out, I cannot join interpretation sessions or upload translated files on time,” she told Iran International. “Clients do not want explanations. They just move to someone in another country.”
She said several long-term contracts were suspended after repeated outages, adding that rebuilding trust with foreign employers may take months.
Network shock ripples through digital labor
Freelancers described what they called a “freeze” in project flow, particularly from overseas clients who rely on constant connectivity and predictable delivery timelines.
The business daily Donya-e-Eqtesad, citing one of the country’s largest freelancing platforms, reported that project volume on a major platform dropped by up to 96 percent in the first days of the shutdown. The newspaper said activity has yet to fully recover.
Official data on the overall size and income of Iran’s freelance sector is not publicly available, making independent estimates difficult to verify.
“The recent internet shutdown is not just an effort to silence the people; it has also devastated over one million online businesses, with their sales dropping by up to 80 percent and small businesses suffering the most damage," the US State Department's Persian account on X posted in late January.
"As a result of the Islamic Republic regime’s reckless policies, nearly half of all jobs are now at risk."
Economic uncertainty compounds losses
The internet disruption coincided with wider infrastructure strain and economic volatility, intensifying pressure on digital workers.
“The most important factor here is the internet shutdown, which can broadly be categorized as an infrastructure disruption,” economic journalist Mahtab Gholizadeh told Iran International from Berlin.
“Alongside that, we have seen electricity and gas outages and other infrastructure shocks that limit access to the basic conditions industries and businesses need to grow,” she added.
Political uncertainty and foreign policy pressures are further weighing on the economy, Gholizadeh said.
“With this level of uncertainty in Iran’s diplomatic environment, conditions become unstable and high volatility prevents making decisions about future,” she said.
Foreign contracts unravel
Freelancers working with overseas employers were particularly exposed during the shutdown.
“In a country where the rial continuously loses value, many of these individuals could secure dollar income through freelancing that stabilizes their livelihoods and even acts as an economic buffer,” Canada-based science and technology journalist Mehdi Saremifar told Iran International.
“However, internet shutdowns and structural restrictions remove even this limited opportunity and effectively block access to the global market,” he added.
Saremifar cautioned that headline income figures often reflect exceptional cases rather than sustained averages.
“The main issue in Iran’s freelance market is not the income ceiling but severe instability and total dependence on internet access,” he said. “With every shutdown or disruption, the entire income stream stops.”
Even after partial reconnection, several freelancers said employers remain hesitant to assign projects inside Iran, citing concerns over delivery delays and payment obstacles.
Digital workers who spoke to Iran International expressed deep concern over losing their jobs and professional reputations, with many increasingly considering emigration. Beyond financial losses, they also described psychological strain caused by repeated uncertainty.
The shutdown appears to have seriously undermined one of the few lifelines available to young Iranians amid deepening isolation and the rial’s unprecedented collapse, compounding economic and psychological strain.
Iran’s rial, trading at nearly 1.6 million to the US dollar on Friday, has lost half its value in just six months and risks losing its role as both a store of value and a functioning currency.
Heydari was injured by live ammunition in his leg during protests on January 8 and taken away alive by security forces. After 33 days of complete silence about his whereabouts, his body was handed to his family on February 9.
Authorities told his father by phone that his son had “died during the protests” and that his body had been kept in morgue for over a month.
Family members who saw the body dispute that account.
They told Iran International that signs of severe beating, a broken nose and, most critically, a bullet wound to the left side of his forehead indicate he was tortured during detention and later killed with a close-range shot to the head.
Two additional visible signs, they said, strongly suggested that only days – not weeks – had passed since his death.
Live fire and arrest
Heydari was born on March 27, 2005, in the village of Virani in Shandiz and lived in Mashhad. He worked in a woodworking shop. Had he not been killed in mid-February, he would have turned 21 within weeks.
On the evening of January 8, he joined thousands of others protesting on Haft-e Tir Boulevard in Mashhad. Witnesses said security forces began firing at crowds gathered near the local police station around 9 p.m.
A protester who survived the crackdown told Iran International that a live round struck Heydari in the leg early in the shooting.
“He lost balance and fell. There was heavy bleeding. We couldn’t pull him back,” the witness said. “Security forces reached him, lifted him and dragged him away.”
Heydari’s mobile phone fell from his pocket as he collapsed. The witness retrieved it before fleeing.
33 days of enforced disappearance
From the moment of his arrest until the early hours of February 9, his family received no official information about his location, medical condition or legal status.
After learning from the witness that Heydari had been wounded and detained, the family searched for him across hospitals, detention centers, courts and morgues. Authorities – including the Intelligence Ministry, the Revolutionary Guards’ intelligence unit and local police – denied knowledge of his case.
The systematic denial of information about a detainee seized in plain sight amounts to enforced disappearance under international law. In practice, it left the family in prolonged uncertainty, cut off from any legal recourse and unaware of whether he was alive or dead.
Such denial also removes scrutiny – a condition that rights groups say can facilitate torture and extrajudicial killing.
The call from the morgue
In the early hours of February 9, officers from the investigative unit in the Shandiz area phoned Heydari’s father and instructed him to go to the Behesht-e Reza cemetery in Mashhad to identify and collect his son’s body.
When the father asked what had happened, he was told his son had “died during the protests” and that his body had been in morgue for more than a month.
Family members who viewed the body said there were visible bruises and a fractured nose, consistent with severe beating. The gunshot wound to the forehead, they said, appeared to have been fired from close range, likely with a handgun.
They also pointed to physical details suggesting that Heydari had been alive long after his January 8 arrest. He had visited a barber that Thursday and had only faint stubble at the time of his detention, they said, but facial hair had grown noticeably by the time his body was returned. They added that the body’s condition did not align with a death that had occurred a month earlier.
Together, they say, these signs contradict the official explanation and indicate he was killed days before his body was released.
Burial under watch
Heydari was buried in his hometown of Virani. The funeral drew large numbers of residents, alongside a significant presence of plainclothes security agents.
Agents attempted to detain several participants during the burial but were prevented by resistance from mourners, according to attendees. The following day, security forces warned the family against holding a memorial ceremony. The gathering ultimately proceeded after mediation by relatives.
Silence and risk
Shahram Sadidi, a Mashhad-born political activist based in the UK who first publicized Heydari’s disappearance, told Iran International that public unawareness may have made it easier for authorities to act without scrutiny.
“If news of his detention had spread earlier, public pressure might have prevented this outcome,” he said.
Field reports, Sadidi said, indicate that more than a thousand people – possibly several thousand – were detained in Mashhad during and after the January 8 protests, with little information released about most of them.
“Families are often threatened that speaking out will harm their loved ones,” he said. “Fear keeps many silent, and that silence creates space for abuse.”
Heydari’s case, marked by live-fire injury, disappearance and a fatal gunshot in custody, underscores the risks facing detainees held beyond public view – and the consequences of 33 days in which no authority acknowledged where he was.
