Author: Jahanbakhsh Nouraei

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Jahanbakhsh Nouraei was born on January 21, 1950 (1 Bahman 1328) in the city of Kangavar. Because of his father’s assignments—he was the head of the Civil Registration Office—the family moved frequently during Nouraei’s childhood; he ultimately grew up in Hamadan. Nouraei is an international lawyer, journalist, translator, writer, and one of Iran’s most prominent film critics. He is widely regarded as the most enduring film critic of the third generation of Iranian critics. Over more than five decades, Nouraei has written extensively across a wide range of fields, producing criticism and essays that have drawn the attention and respect of numerous journalists, critics, and cinema writers.

The well-known American film critic Roger Ebert once said that good movies make good people. From this perspective, it can also be said that good films create good protesters and good rebels as well—even when those films have no direct connection to politics. In essence, any idea that challenges a worn-out, ineffective aspect of human life and says no to it is, by definition, an act of rebellion. Likewise, any transformation in a film’s form or content is a gesture of refusal—toward undesirable norms in reality and within cinema itself. From the accumulation of these refusals, awareness and knowledge are…

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