Reading Lolita in Tehran at Speed Cinema
Reading Lolita in Tehran
Directed by Eran Riklis
Sunday, August 2, 3 pm | BUY TICKETS
$12 | $8 Speed members
“Gripping—Truly a film for these times.”—Arash Azizi, The Atlantic
This adaptation of Azar Nafisi’s #1 New York Times bestselling memoir Reading Lolita in Tehran is a remarkable exploration of women’s resilience in revolutionary Iran.
As Islamic morality squads stage arbitrary raids in Tehran and as fundamentalists seize hold of the universities, Azar Nafisi, an inspired teacher, secretly gathers six of her most committed female students to read forbidden western classics. Unaccustomed to being asked to speak their minds, they soon removed their veils, their stories intertwining with the novels they read: just like the heroines of Nabokov, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James or Jane Austen, the women in Nafisi’s living room dare to dream, hope and love as we experience the complexity of the lives of individuals facing political, moral and personal siege.
The film features striking performances by Golshifteh Farahani (Patterson) and Zar Amir-Ebrahimi (Holy Spider), actors who face bans from Iran’s Islamic regime. 2026, Israel/Italy/U.K., DCP, in English and Persian with English subtitles, 107 minutes. Recommended for 15+
