“Entertaining and informative doc … enriching for those who follow Iranian cinema closely and an eye-opener for less worldly film buffs.”
John DeFore, The Hollywood Reporter
“Jamsheed Akrami’s enlightening documentary, “A Cinema of Discontent” … with a wealth of film clips and interviews … takes the viewer on a journey through several decades of mainstream Iranian cinema.”
Loren King, The Boston Globe
“A Cinema of Discontent is my No. 1 suggestion……. It’s truly fascinating."
Liz Ferguson, The Montreal Gazette
At a time when Iranian cinema is garnering acclaim around the world, Jamsheed Akrami reveals the rigid government controls and harsh censorship codes that are being imposed on Iranian filmmakers, and meditates on the challenges those restrictions pose to the creative process. Careful analysis of both mainstream and art-house films, and interviews with such renowned Iranian filmmakers as Asghar Farhadi, Jafar Panahi, and Bahman Ghobadi offer insight into the many ways that the artists have challenged these rules, and the consequences they have suffered for doing so. Rottentomatoes.com
“Film scholar and filmmaker Jamsheed Akrami continues his outstanding documentary series on Iranian cinema (Friendly Persuasion, 2000; The Lost Cinema, 2007) with this illuminating look at film censorship in Revolutionary Iran… A Cinema of Discontent reveals the dark and absurd aspects of censorship as well as the strategies, aesthetic and personal, that these artists have developed in response.”
UCLA Film & Television Archive
“Thoroughly entertaining and enlightening documentary… Filmmaker Akrami comprehensively explores the censorship codes and religious taboos that leave some Iranian filmmakers in despair, or in prison, and lead others to increasingly artful subterfuge.”
Gene Siskel Film Center
"The power of Akrami’s film is the result of his excellent selection of film fragments that illustrate various restrictions imposed by censors and ways to circumvent them…..Despite the seriousness of the subject matter dealt with in Akrami’s film, there is no shortage of humor, which is the best weapon in the fight against the systemic absurdity of censorship."
Watch Docs Film Festival, Warsaw
"Akrami has created a confident, slick and effective documentary, one that any cinephile with an interest in the creative control of filmmakers would take an interest in….Akrami interjects the interviews with lively graphics and animation to illustrate the points made, which add levity to an overall serious subject. "
Shelagh M. Rowan-Legg, twitchfilm.com
"The most informative of the Iranian films that showed in Cairo was American/Iranian Jamsheed Akrami’s documentary, A Cinema of Discontent, which chronicles the tight laws and censorship codes enforced by the Iranian Islamist state.
Being screened at the beginning of the festival, the Cinema of Discontent puts Iranian films in a whole new light for the audience. It gets us to really value the great deal of trouble filmmakers go through to keep the cinema industry going in these harsh circumstances."
Albawaba, Cairo International Film Festival