Iran’s cinematic masters form a constellation of visionary artists whose works fuse storytelling with a rich tapestry of visual and theatrical artistry. In the golden age of Iranian cinema – roughly the 1960s through the 1990s – a generation of auteur directors emerged who were not mere filmmakers, but poets, mythmakers, and historians working through the medium of film. These pioneers of Iranian New Wave and beyond rejected the formulaic commercial “FilmFarsi” productions of their time and instead crafted deeply cultural, intellectually ambitious works . They drew on Iran’s millennia of art, architecture, literature and theatre to inform their films’ cinematography, set design, and costume design, achieving a “complete harmony between form and content” in their cinema . Each of these great directors – masters like Bahram Beyzai, Ali Hatami, Abbas Kiarostami, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, and their contemporaries – developed a distinct style. Yet all shared a devotion to authenticity and a belief that film could integrate all artistic elements (from photography and music to stagecraft and poetry) into a unified, transcendent experience. Their films often feel akin to visual poetry: whether through lavish period costumes and ornate sets recreating historical epochs, or through minimalist shots of Iranian landscapes imbued with metaphor, these directors turned cinema into a “poetic ambiance” reflecting Iran’s cultural soul .
At the heart of this movement was an impulse to reconnect modern Iranian cinema with its indigenous cultural roots. Nowhere is this clearer than in the work of Bahram Beyzai (Bahram Bayzai), a towering figure who is simultaneously a filmmaker, playwright, and scholar of Iran’s theatrical history . Beyzai’s films are imbued with the rhythms of traditional theatre and mythology, achieving a synthesis of stage and screen that is utterly unique. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, long before he shot a frame of film, Beyzai immersed himself in studying Persian myth, literature and performing arts – from the Ta’ziyeh passion plays and puppet theater to comic improvised folk plays . As a young intellectual, he was disillusioned with the derivative nature of local cinema then, and he sought inspiration in the raw power of Iran’s own dramatic traditions. “I did not choose theatre; theatre chose me,” Beyzai later reflected, describing how witnessing a Ta’ziyeh performance “charmed my soul” at a time when commercial cinema felt bankrupt to him . Experiencing the “enchanting beauty” of that traditional form, he recalled, “made me aware of my paucity… I realized that my ancestral treasure had been hidden from me”, prompting him to spend years researching and writing about Iran’s theatrical heritage . Only after this period of soul-searching and scholarship did Beyzai turn to filmmaking, determined to infuse Iranian cinema with the depth of its own culture and “lost dreams” .
One can feel this profound cultural excavation in Beyzai’s cinematic style. His films carry the weight of myth and history even when they appear as contemporary stories. Beyzai often employs minimalist sets with symbolic props and striking costumes, much as a Ta’ziyeh play would. (In Ta’ziyeh theatre, a few objects – a basin of water for a river, a palm frond for a forest – stand in for entire environments, while color-coded costumes signal heroes and villains .) Beyzai translates these techniques to film, using visual symbolism to suggest far more than what is literally shown on screen. For example, in his mysterious parable The Stranger and the Fog (1974), an isolated village shrouded in green mist becomes an almost theatrical space: the set is simple – a boat, a shore – but the atmosphere is dense with metaphor and ritual. In one haunting scene from The Stranger and the Fog, a lone woman in black stands on a mist-laden shore beside a beached boat. This spectral image is deliberately unreal, a stage of fog and light in which Beyzai explores themes of memory, loss and fate. The film’s visual storytelling pays open tribute to the cinema of Akira Kurosawa, whom Beyzai admires . In fact, Beyzai has admitted that “the editing style, the costume design and the tracking speed of the camera in Stranger and Fog” were conceived as an homage to Kurosawa’s samurai epics . The climactic battle in The Stranger and the Fog plays out as a muddy village skirmish strongly reminiscent of Seven Samurai – a deliberate homage to Kurosawa’s staging of action, transposed into an Iranian folktale context . Yet Beyzai filters this influence through Persian mythology: in the final fight, whenever the hero Āyat strikes down an invader, he himself is wounded as if cosmically twinned to his enemy, and villagers bury the foes in mud to fertilize the land – an ritualistic image linking war and renewal . Beyzai’s use of color symbolism in costume is also sophisticated. In The Stranger and the Fog, the female protagonist Ra’na initially wears all black, then hues of red and green as her role shifts toward one of life-giving fertility, and finally white when she is in a liminal state of transformation . Such deliberate costume transitions act almost like poetic verses in the film’s visual language, conveying character arcs without a word of dialogue. Beyzai’s deep knowledge of art and mythology enables him to pack each frame with meaning – an alchemy of theater and cinema that challenges the viewer to look beyond surface realism.
It is no surprise that Beyzai is also a celebrated playwright and thinker, because his films operate on multiple levels: the literal story, the allegorical subtext, and often a self-reflexive commentary on storytelling itself. His breakthrough debut film Downpour (1972) was hailed as a cornerstone of the Iranian New Wave, praised for its highly poetic yet socially conscious style . Downpour introduced Beyzai’s penchant for blending fiction and reality, and for “blurring the boundaries” of traditional narrative with a “highly poetic approach to editing, dialogue and context” . The film is set in a working-class neighborhood and follows a teacher’s ill-fated romance, but while it has neo-realist elements, Beyzai’s staging and cutting are lyrical, even dreamlike at times. He used inventive camera moves and edits that were unprecedented in Iran then – which he partly credits to his desire to “go against Iranian commercial cinema and its affected pseudo-intellectual films”, as he explained in an interview . Downpour’s very form was a rebellion, introducing formal rigor and respect for the “educated protagonist” where previously such characters were usually caricatured on screen . Beyzai proved with that film that Iranian cinema could be intellectually serious and stylistically innovative, without losing its local identity. Over the decades, despite facing censorship and eventually exile, Beyzai continued to create influential works (in film and theater) and scholarly writings. His masterpieces like Death of Yazdgerd (1982) – a film essentially staging a play inside an abandoned mill with only a handful of actors in period costume – or Bashu, the Little Stranger (1989) – which uses the encounter of a war-displaced southern boy with a northern village woman to explore language and identity – all reflect his enduring themes. Always, Beyzai “reframes indigenous motifs” in new ways, as scholars note . He refracts ancient rituals and folktales through a modern prism, forging what one critic calls an “emancipatory aesthetics” that is both original and authentically Persian . There is a scholarly consensus that Bahram Beyzai’s oeuvre, spanning cinema and theater, stands as “paradigms of being and belonging” in Iranian art – works that question how Iranians relate to their myths, their history, and each other . For his unparalleled blend of erudition and imagination, Beyzai is regarded not just as a filmmaker, but as an ustaad – a master teacher of culture through the medium of film.
If Beyzai can be thought of as Iran’s cinematic philosopher-poet, then Ali Hatami might be its master painter and storyteller, often called the “Hafez of Iranian cinema” for the native lyricism of his works . Ali Hatami’s films are lush tapestries of Iranian life, particularly life in bygone eras – the Qajar and early Pahlavi periods (19th–early 20th century) – which he adored and meticulously recreated. Hatami was not only a director and screenwriter; he was frequently his own art director and costume designer, approaching cinema as a total artwork to express Persian culture . A graduate of the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Tehran, Hatami began in theater and thus understood the importance of staging and design from the outset . His debut film, Hasan Kachal (Hasan the Bald) (1970), was in fact Iran’s first musical film – a fantastical folk musical based on a legend, complete with songs and dances inspired by Iranian folklore. In making it, Hatami showed a flair for combining traditional theatrical storytelling with cinema. Over the next two decades, he refined a personal style defined by “melodious dialogue and [a] traditional Iranian ambiance created through architecture and set design.” Indeed, any frame of a Hatami film is recognizable by its ambiance: antique Persian furnishings, authentic costumes down to the smallest embroidered details, and rhythmic, idiomatic Persian dialogue that often sounds like it could have been lifted from a poem or an old tale.
Hatami’s devotion to historical authenticity and visual detail was almost obsessive. Perhaps his most legendary project was the grand period television series Hezar Dastan (also spelled Hezardastan, 1978–1987), an “epic historical drama” widely hailed as the greatest series ever made for Iranian TV . To film Hezar Dastan, Hatami undertook an astonishing endeavor: he built an entire outdoor backlot – a “Cinema Town” – recreating old Tehran on a massive scale . This Ghazali Cinema Town (named after the location) included detailed replicas of historic streets, architecture, and urban scenes from the 1920s–30s, allowing Hatami to control every visual element on screen . He enlisted even Italian set designers to help construct this sprawling stage for Iran’s past . The dedication paid off: stepping into Hezar Dastan truly feels like stepping into an earlier era, with cobbled streets, vintage automobiles, Qajar-era domed buildings, and bustling bazaars all perfectly realized. A view of Ghazali Cinema Town – the extensive historical backlot built by Ali Hatami – shows period architecture and antique vehicles, forming a life-sized set of old Tehran . This huge investment in set design was not merely for spectacle; it was in service of storytelling. Hezar Dastan is set during the turbulent 1940s in Tehran and tells an intertwined tale of love, political intrigue, and social change. By constructing the physical world of that time in painstaking detail, Hatami gave Iranian audiences an immersive connection to their own history. One could say he “painted the people’s culture, etiquette, and values on the screen,” as one tribute observed, using the language of imagery to do what classical poets once did with words . In fact, Ali Hatami has been likened to Sa’adi – one of Iran’s greatest poets – for his ability to depict the manners and morals of Persian culture so vividly in cinema .
Throughout his filmography, Hatami consistently celebrated Iranian cultural heritage. He made films about national icons – for instance, Kamalolmolk (1984), a biographical film about the famous Qajar-era painter Kamal-ol-Molk, and Hajji Washington (1982), a tragicomic story of Iran’s first ambassador to the U.S. in the late 1800s . In these works, Hatami not only dramatized historical figures, he also lovingly recreated their milieu: the costumes of Qajar courtiers, the palaces and gardens with their Persian architecture, even the language style of the time. His films feature ornate period costumes and sets that could be studied as ethnographic references. He often worked with Iran’s top cinematographers and designers (when he wasn’t designing himself) to ensure visual authenticity. For example, in Kamalolmolk, which explores the relationship between the painter and the Qajar royal court, Hatami himself took on set and costume design duties, and the film’s look is rich with detail – an achievement that won local awards . Yet, beneath the surface beauty, Hatami’s works usually offer a critique or elegy for what was lost. Hajji Washington, while filled with sumptuous 19th-century attire and settings, is ultimately a poignant commentary on Iran’s fraught encounter with the modern West, embodied in the lone figure of an ambassador stranded abroad. Hatami’s most acclaimed pre-revolution film, Sooteh-Delan (Broken-Hearted) (1977), is set in 1930s Tehran and often considered his masterpiece of that era . Critics laud Sooteh-Delan for its “complete harmony between form and content,” where Hatami’s aesthetic – the music, the visually nostalgic set pieces, the affectionate portrayal of traditional life – perfectly complements the story’s emotional core . This harmony is key to Hatami’s enduring appeal: he wasn’t using ornate design for its own sake, but to embody the themes of nostalgia, cultural continuity, and the romance of a bygone Iran. By the time of his untimely death in 1996, Ali Hatami had become a cultural icon. Iranians remember him for bringing their literature, history and folklore into cinema in a way that was both academically respectful and warmly popular. Though his films rarely traveled internationally (their idiomatic Persian dialogue can be challenging for subtitles), within Iran he is beloved. It’s telling that even decades later, the Iranian Film Critics Association voted Hezar Dastan the best series ever made , and events are held to celebrate his legacy . Hatami proved that set design and costume design could be more than visual backdrops – they could be active storytellers, conveying a “traditional Iranian ambiance” that itself carries meaning . In doing so, he elevated production design to a form of cultural preservation.
The contrast between Hatami’s opulent recreations of the past and the next master’s radically spare style is stark, yet both represent facets of Iranian cinema’s poetry. Abbas Kiarostami, arguably Iran’s most internationally renowned director, took a minimalist approach that nonetheless achieved profound synergy between cinematography, setting, and theme. Kiarostami’s hallmark is a deceptive simplicity: he often uses real locations (village roads, desert hills, modest houses) and non-professional actors, avoids elaborate costumes or sets, and strips cinema down to its elemental components. In his own words, “What is the least amount of information you can give an audience and still ensure they know what is happening?” . Kiarostami’s films seek that minimal optimality, omitting everything extraneous. “Elements that can be eliminated have been eliminated. Everything redundant is cut away,” he explained of his style . This philosophy is borne out in masterpieces like Where Is the Friend’s House? (1987), Taste of Cherry (1997), and The Wind Will Carry Us (1999) – films where very little “happens” on the surface, yet through subtle visual cues and patient observation, a deep emotional truth emerges.
Despite their pared-down aesthetics, Kiarostami’s works are as visually deliberate as any epic. He treats reality itself as a canvas: natural landscapes and everyday environments become his “set design,” and the clothing of ordinary people becomes his “costume design.” For Kiarostami, what matters is authenticity and the interplay between people and their environment. “Casting a door is just as important as finding the right actors,” he once remarked, emphasizing how crucial real locations are to him . “The filming location, the spaces through which the actors move, are as important as anything else.” In practice, this means Kiarostami would scout villages, roads, and interiors that naturally fit the story and then incorporate them nearly unchanged into the film. A classic example is the iconic lone cypress tree on a hill in Where Is the Friend’s House? – an image Kiarostami said haunted him for years and which he “faithfully reconstructed on film” as the guiding visual motif . His cinematography (often in collaboration with masters like Mahmoud Kalari or Hossein Jafarian) finds lyricism in these real spaces: the zigzag of a path up a green hill, the play of light and shadow in a simple room, the framing of a car winding through dusty switchbacks from a distant panoramic view. Without building anything artificial, Kiarostami composed nature and reality to speak for him.
Crucially, Kiarostami’s minimalism is not born of technical inability – it is a conscious artistic choice. Early in his career, he experimented with flashy techniques but quickly abandoned them. “There must always be a good reason to move the camera,” Kiarostami says, admitting that his camera setups became “quite simple” over time . He even noted that for years cinematographers avoided working with him because his methods were so “unsophisticated” in a technical sense . But this understatement is deliberate: “To focus on anything other than the story is to short-change the audience,” he asserts . In Kiarostami’s philosophy, form must be dictated by content, never overshadow it . “If there is anything lasting in your film – if there is poetry – it will reveal itself through the characters, their interactions, and the landscapes they explore together, not [through] a flamboyant camera technique,” he explains . This credo led him to an art of great purity. In his mature films, we rarely see the kind of overt set pieces or dramatic costumes that other directors might employ; instead we see the truth of a moment – a child’s anxious face running through winding alleys, an old man sitting under a tree in silence, two men driving across Tehran’s outskirts at dusk – captured with such patience and clarity that it becomes universally resonant. Kiarostami’s visual style has been described as the “minimalist epic”, a term filmmaker Mike Leigh used to characterize how Kiarostami makes intimate, local stories feel grand and allegorical . His films are deeply rooted in Persian poetic tradition (indeed he was a poet himself), often invoking or even directly quoting poets like Forugh Farrokhzad or Sohrab Sepehri. For instance, the title The Wind Will Carry Us is taken from a poem by Forugh, and the film’s meditative scenes of winds blowing through wheat fields evoke the ephemeral beauty those poems speak of. In that film, the rural village setting – its sun-baked roofs, its quiet cemeteries and pastures – is not adorned in any special way, but the cinematography paints it in gentle light and generous long takes, inviting viewers to contemplate mortality and the simple moments of life. When a film is as sparse as Taste of Cherry (which mostly features a man driving through repetitive landscapes on the outskirts of Tehran, searching for someone to bury him after his planned suicide), every subtle shift in light, every contour of the land, and every article of clothing (the protagonist’s drab shirt, the soldier’s uniform, the seminary student’s turban) carries weight. Kiarostami orchestrates these everyday visuals to reinforce his themes of spiritual searching and ambiguity.
For Kiarostami, content and form eventually become indistinguishable. “I never consciously think about the form of my work because form derives from content… One leads directly to the other,” he says . In his mature view, “The content is the form.” This almost mystical unity explains why his films, though lacking in obvious “design”, are considered masterpieces of cinematography and mise-en-scène. By the simplest means, he achieves a cinematic language that affects viewers in a profound, often inexplicable way. Many critics have noted the almost spiritual feeling one gets from Kiarostami’s best works – as if by peeling away movie artifices, he revealed a transcendental core. Even his use of sound (an offscreen space as important as onscreen) and the way he captures the passage of time (clouds moving over a hill, the gradual sunset at day’s end) serve as a kind of set design woven by nature itself. In sum, Kiarostami showed that minimalism can be as deliberate and artful as maximalism, and that an Iranian sensibility can manifest in restraint just as well as in embellishment. His influence on world cinema has been enormous; by the mid-1990s he was winning major prizes (Palme d’Or for Taste of Cherry in 1997) and inspiring countless filmmakers with his approach. Yet he remained modest about his craft, more interested in asking questions than providing answers. “A work of art doesn’t exist outside the perception of the audience,” he once said – emphasizing the collaborative meaning-making between film and viewer . This open-ended, contemplative quality is precisely why his films feel “philosophical and allegorical” , inviting interpretations like a poem does. In the grand tapestry of Iranian cinema, Kiarostami’s thread is one of subtle hues and fine embroidery – understated but unforgettably beautiful.
If Kiarostami stripped cinema to its essence, another visionary, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, took a different journey: from didactic beginnings to a cinema of vibrant colors and daring metaphors. Makhmalbaf emerged in the 1980s with films that were initially aligned with the post-revolution Islamic ethos, but he underwent a remarkable artistic transformation in the 1990s, blossoming into one of the leaders of Iran’s poetic cinema. His 1996 film Gabbeh is a touchstone of this poetic turn – a film often described as a “gorgeous tale” woven like the colorful Persian rug (gabbeh) that gives it its name . Gabbeh is not driven by plot but by image, music, and folklore; it “celebrates life with all its colours” and invites the viewer to “savour moments of everyday activities” among a nomadic tribe . The collaboration of a “superb cinematographer (Mahmoud Kalari)” and a legendary composer (Hossein Alizadeh) under Makhmalbaf’s direction yielded a film of breathtaking visual and sonic beauty . Every frame of Gabbeh is saturated with vivid color – from the brightly patterned costumes of the Qashqai nomads to the golden landscapes of the Iranian steppes. The women in the film wear “their brightly-coloured clothes and stand out against monochromatic colour fields” like living jewels, an intentional design that mirrors the bold colors of the gabbeh rugs they weave . Makhmalbaf uses the very fabric of their life – the wool, dyes, and cloth – as metaphors within the film. We watch the process of rug weaving in detail, from shearing sheep to boiling plants for dye, to the painstaking looming of threads . The visual motifs of dye and pigment carry into magical-realist scenes: in one sequence, a teacher character plucks colors from nature – red flowers, yellow wheat, blue sky – and suddenly his hands turn those colors in an almost childlike magic trick . In Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s Gabbeh (1996), a poetic scene shows a man holding up his hands dyed in blue and orange, as if he has captured the colors of sky and sun in his palms – a vivid illustration of the film’s celebration of color and life. This striking image is accomplished with simple cuts (not digital effects), exemplifying how Makhmalbaf’s direction finds profound visual poetry in simple techniques . The dialogue in the scene explicitly ties to the film’s theme: “Life is color, love is color… life is suffering, love is suffering,” a choral voice proclaims, reinforcing the idea that to embrace life one must embrace both its joys and pains, just as the rich dyes of a carpet come from both vibrant flowers and arduous labor .
Makhmalbaf’s journey to this lush cinematic style is fascinating. He began as a self-described “committed Islamist” filmmaker in the early 1980s, even an austere one who disdained the “poetic” new wave films of auteurs like Mehrjui . His early work was often black-and-white (morally and literally), with a strict, propagandistic tone and no room for nuance or color – reflective of a revolutionary zeal. However, by the mid-90s he had dramatically shifted. Gabbeh loudly announced Makhmalbaf’s “departure from his absolutist point of view,” as one critic put it . “Makhmalbaf literally and loudly changed the lens of his camera, to celebrate life with all its colours, ups and downs,” abandoning the stark fundamentalist outlook for a humanist, mystical one . The difference is like night and day: his earlier films refused to show ambiguity or sensual beauty (for example, women’s voices or bright attire were shunned), but Gabbeh revels in them. It even notably features the voice of a female singer in its soundtrack – reportedly “the first postrevolutionary film” to do so, breaking a taboo in Iranian cinema where women’s solo singing had been banned . This integration of music, especially Alizadeh’s soulful compositions and folk songs, with the imagery creates a synesthetic experience for the viewer: “There is an aesthetic match between the sonic and visual elements of the film,” with the female voice representing the voice of the film’s heroine, and the colors on screen representing her emotional world .
Beyond Gabbeh, Makhmalbaf continued this artistic flowering. His subsequent films like The Silence (1998) (a visually rich tale of a blind boy attuned to sounds, set in Tajikistan) and The Color of Paradise (1999) (by his contemporary Majid Majidi, but influenced by the era’s poetic style) carried on the idea of cinema as a transcendent sensory experience. Makhmalbaf even curated a “poetic trilogy” of his own (including Gabbeh and The Silence) which solidified his reputation. But Gabbeh remains the exemplar. Critics today consider it “a classical work of Iranian poetic cinema”, a film to be “viewed, remembered, and re-examined for many generations” . It stands as proof that Iranian cinema could achieve the same kind of “mystical poeticism” visually that Persian literature achieved in verse . Interestingly, Gabbeh’s impact even went beyond cinema – it sparked international interest in the actual gabbeh carpets, turning them into sought-after art objects after viewers around the world fell in love with the film’s imagery . In essence, Makhmalbaf managed to transmit a piece of nomadic Persian culture to global audiences through a brilliant blend of cinematography (Kalari’s painterly camerawork), costume and set design (the authentic nomadic tents, the flowing tribal dresses), and a narrative structure that eschews conventional storytelling for a more woven, patterned approach.
It is worth noting that Makhmalbaf’s personal evolution – from rigidity to creativity – is often seen as symbolic of Iranian cinema’s own post-revolution evolution. The 1980s imposed many restrictions on content and aesthetics (costume design, for instance, had to abide by strict dress codes; visual depiction of women, music, etc., were limited). By finding ingenious ways to express beauty within (and sometimes against) those confines, filmmakers like Makhmalbaf helped Iranian cinema re-emerge on the world stage in the 1990s with a new poetic vigor. As one analysis pointed out, Gabbeh can even be read as subversive: its joyous depiction of colorfully dressed women (at a time when drab colors were officially encouraged) and its emphasis on nature and indigenous culture (at a time of intense ideological control) constituted a gentle rebellion . The film subtly promotes values of love, freedom in choosing one’s partner, and reverence for pre-Islamic tradition – all within a seemingly apolitical folktale. This clever embedding of social commentary in visual allegory became a hallmark of many Iranian films navigating censorship. Makhmalbaf himself said in later interviews that independent art-house cinema in Iran thrived on such creativity even under constraints, whereas formulaic mainstream films struggled to remain relevant . In his words, “because there is so little room for expression otherwise, a lot of people love cinema because they find it a way of expressing themselves.” . This sentiment explains the incredible outpouring of artistry we see in Iran’s best films: directors, writers, designers – all poured their yearnings and critiques into subtle details of cinematography, set, and costume when explicit statements were not possible.
While Beyzai, Hatami, Kiarostami, and Makhmalbaf form four pillars of Iran’s cinematic pantheon, there were other pioneers alongside them, each contributing in different ways to the unity of image, design, and story. Dariush Mehrjui, for example, is often credited with igniting the Iranian New Wave with his classic The Cow (1969) – a film far removed from lush design (shot in stark black-and-white in a poor village) but which used its simplicity and haunting camerawork to such powerful effect that it unveiled a new realistic style. Mehrjui’s later films like Hamoun (1990) would incorporate surreal dream sequences and metaphorical production design (Hamoun’s apartment filling with sand, for instance) to externalize the character’s psyche. Masoud Kimiai, another new wave figure, brought a gritty, urban visual sensibility with films like Gheysar (1969) and The Deer (1974), where the “costume” of the Tehran street tough – the famous leather jacket and razor – became an icon of cultural rebellion. Kimiai wasn’t known for elaborate set pieces, but his atmospheric depiction of Tehran’s underbelly and the mise-en-scène of alleyways and dens influenced the crime genre in Iran. Parviz Kimiavi experimented with blending documentary and fiction, and his film The Mongols (1973) is remembered for its absurdist imagery (like television sets mounted on donkey carts) – a different kind of production design that satirized the incursion of mass media into tradition. Sohrab Shahid Saless took minimalism to an extreme with films like Still Life (1974), where extraordinarily long takes of quotidian life create a documentary-like authenticity; yet even he used the landscape (an isolated railroad crossing, a creaky house) expressively as symbols of stagnation and change. And we cannot forget Nasser Taghvai, whose Captain Khorshid (1987) (an Iranian adaptation of Hemingway’s To Have and Have Not) showed how a period piece set in the Persian Gulf could be brought to life with outstanding cinematography and art direction, winning acclaim for its atmospheric portrayal of 1930s Iran. Taghvai, like Beyzai, also had an interest in theater and folklore – he made a documentary about the “zār” rituals of southern Iran, and in Captain Khorshid he ensured the costumes (sailors’ garb, local attire) and sets (a coffee house, a sailboat) felt true to the locale, lending the film a strong sense of place that complements its literary source.
If one looks at this illustrious roster of Iranian directors from the 1960s–90s, a common thread emerges: they were all auteurs deeply involved in the creative process beyond directing – often writing their scripts, overseeing art design, and guiding the cinematography to realize a singular vision. In some cases, they literally took on the roles of designer or editor. This perhaps stems from Iran’s art tradition where poets, painters, and musicians often overlapped in their crafts. In cinema, figures like Ali Hatami and Bahram Beyzai carried that multi-disciplinary instinct – Hatami designing sets and costumes for his own films , Beyzai editing and even composing music for some of his. The result is that their films feel authored in every detail. At the same time, Iran also produced specialist talents who collaborated with these directors to achieve greatness. For instance, we discussed cinematographer Mahmoud Kalari, who shot Gabbeh (and also notable films by Kiarostami, like The Wind Will Carry Us, and Asghar Farhadi later on). Kalari’s expertise in color and lighting significantly shaped the visual impact of those films . Another unsung hero is Iraj Raminfar, one of Iran’s most celebrated production designers and art directors. Raminfar actually got his start working with Bahram Beyzai – he was invited as a young artist to design the production for The Stranger and the Fog (1974) . Mentored by a master, Raminfar went on to have a stellar decades-long career, becoming “one of the most respected names in Iranian cinema… celebrated for his contributions to set and costume design.” He garnered many awards (multiple Crystal Simorghs for art direction) and even wrote a seminal book “Film Design” in 2000 to pass on his knowledge . His story exemplifies how Iranian cinema developed its own cadre of skilled designers dedicated to elevating film art. Raminfar bridged cinema and theatre design, just as many directors did; he worked in films, TV, and stage, leaving “an unforgettable mark” on all . Collaborations between visionary directors and such designers or cinematographers created a virtuous cycle – a film school of sorts where each project was an artistic workshop. It’s notable that many of these artists also went on to teach or inspire younger generations. Kiarostami, for example, conducted workshops worldwide and mentored students, spreading his minimalist gospel . Beyzai taught at Stanford University and continued writing about theatre and film history, influencing scholars and practitioners . The legacy of these masters is therefore not only the films they made, but the techniques, perspectives, and passion they instilled in Iran’s cinematic discourse.
The interplay of theatre, literature, and cinema in Iran is a defining element of these masters’ works, and it underpinned their approach to set and costume design. Iran has a rich theatrical heritage – aside from Ta’ziyeh, forms like pardeh-khani (storytelling with painted screens) and siah-bazi (commedia dell’arte-like improvised comedy) have long been popular. Even the traditional Persian puppet theatre and Naqqali (epic narration) contributed to a visual storytelling culture. The modern pioneers were keenly aware of these forms. Beyzai literally wrote the book on Persian theatre (“Theatre in Iran”, 1965) and introduced many previously marginalized folk elements into modern drama. Ali Hatami’s dialogical style, with its rhyming slang and aphorisms, often resembles Kheimeh Shab-Bazi (traditional marionette shows) or the cadences of Hafez’s poetry, giving his films a literary flavor in spoken word. The costume design in such films often reflects character archetypes familiar from theatre or literature: the pure hero in simple humble clothes, the tyrant in extravagant regalia, the comedic sidekick in slightly exaggerated garb. For instance, in Hezar Dastan, Hatami costumed the villainous characters in very dandified, pompous outfits (fezzes, suits with flashy accessories) to visually convey their corruption, whereas the patriotic or idealistic characters (like the protagonist, a traditionalist craftsman drawn into politics) wear more modest, traditional clothes. This not only signaled traits to the audience but also subtly critiqued the Westernizing elite of the time period he depicted.
It is also noteworthy how Persian visual arts influenced these filmmakers’ compositions. We see references to miniature painting in the carefully balanced frames of some films – for example, Mohamad Reza Aslani’s rediscovered gem Chess of the Wind (1976) features tableau-like shots inside a Qajar mansion that directly evoke Persian miniatures in their symmetry and detail . The film’s director Aslani was himself a painter and art theorist, and he used his keen design sense to create a “sumptuous, refined, and poetic” period piece that many compare to the works of Luchino Visconti for its lush production values . In Chess of the Wind, the set – an opulent aristocratic house – truly becomes a character: “a mansion which is almost a character itself”, as one reviewer noted . The sand-colored mansion with its stained-glass windows is not only the backdrop but the very subject of the film in a sense, symbolizing the decay of a feudal family . Aslani’s production design background led him to choose this house as the central set, and his cinematographer (Houshang Baharlou) lit its interiors entirely by candles or natural light, inspired by Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon . The result is a visual experience where the textures of the setting – the polished wood, the rich fabrics, the flickering of flame on plaster – communicate the film’s mood. “Visually, the film is a sumptuous feast from first frame till last,” raved one critic . Moreover, the use of color in Chess of the Wind is highly coded: the upper rooms have warm golden and brown tones, whereas the basement (site of intrigue and crime) is awash in “hellish reds, purples and blacks.” All of this meticulous design serves to heighten the film’s themes of decadence and downfall, without needing heavy exposition. Such examples underscore that the great Iranian directors, even when influenced by European cinema (Visconti, Bresson, Ophüls are cited in Aslani’s case ), filtered those influences through a distinctly Iranian aesthetic lens.
In Chess of the Wind, we also see an interesting use of costume and makeup to denote social hierarchy and character. The paralytic Lady Aghdas, in mourning yet cunning, is costumed in elegant but severe dresses, always wheeled around in a grand old wheelchair – a visual metaphor for both her power and her entrapment. The servant women appear in simpler clothes and repeated setups (washing laundry in a courtyard fountain), filmed in rigid compositions like a “Greek chorus” commenting on the story . Meanwhile, the scheming men wear formal Qajar-era attire, complete with kolah (hats) and traditional robes, to embody the patriarchy the film ultimately subverts. Notably, Chess of the Wind also features one of the first portrayals of a same-sex liaison in Iranian film (a daring move in 1976), and even there, design plays a role – a delicately staged scene with mirrors and candlelight that implies a lesbian relationship through gestures and glances rather than explicit action . The production design, by creating an ambiance of claustrophobia and faded glory, allowed Aslani to push boundaries in content under the guise of an artful period piece. The film’s initial reception was hostile and confused (some viewers literally couldn’t follow its time jumps and symbolic imagery ), but after being lost for decades and resurfacing recently, it’s now hailed as a “masterpiece of world cinema” . This redemption arc of Chess of the Wind further exemplifies how ahead-of-its-time Iranian design-centric filmmaking was, and how global appreciation sometimes came much later.
As we gather all these threads – the scholarly depth of Beyzai, the painterly nostalgia of Hatami, the meditative realism of Kiarostami, the chromatic poetry of Makhmalbaf, and the various other textures added by their peers – a rich tapestry emerges. Iranian cinema’s greatest directors created a total artwork in each film, where cinematography, set design, and costume design are not incidental but rather integral to the storytelling. Their films achieve what one might call “cinematic poetry”. The term “poetic” is often applied to Iranian cinema, and not by accident: these directors were explicitly inspired by Persian poetry and art. They did not see a divide between visual art and narrative art – just as a Persian carpet’s beauty lies as much in its colors and patterns as in the story it depicts, an Iranian film’s beauty lies in how it looks as much as in what its characters say or do.
This mindset required a certain boldness and disregard for conventional boundaries. It also often demanded meticulous craftsmanship and collaboration. From the “hundreds of people” involved in staging a Ta’ziyeh in the 1800s (as Beyzai cited) to the hundreds building Hatami’s Cinema Town, to the dedicated cinematographers waiting for the perfect light on a Kiarostami hillside, these works were labor-intensive labors of love. The pay-off was cinematic moments that feel timeless. Consider the final shot of Kiarostami’s Where Is the Friend’s House? – a boy running up a zigzag path lined by tall trees to return his friend’s notebook. No special set was built, yet that natural setting, captured in soft light, arranged with perfect symmetry, becomes as iconic an image as any studio-crafted set could be. Or think of the closing scene of Beyzai’s Bashu: a mourning ritual where village women smear mud on their faces and clothes in a primordial gesture of grief and unity – the costumes literally become part of the performance of emotion, tying the characters back to the earth. Or the sumptuous banquet scenes in Hatami’s Delshodegan (The Love-Stricken, 1992), where classical musicians in Qajar costumes perform against candlelit backdrops – sequences that could be paintings by themselves, exuding the elegance of a bygone courtly era. Such scenes linger in the mind’s eye, showing how visual and design elements can etch a film in memory as strongly as any plot point.
Finally, it must be stressed that these great ones were not merely aesthetes; their visual artistry was always in service of deeper themes. Social and political critique often coursed underneath the gorgeous surfaces. When Hatami “painted… the intellectual values of the land on the curtain”, it was sometimes to gently critique modern neglect of those values . When Kiarostami kept his form simple, it was to invite audiences to reflect on philosophical questions (life, death, morality) without distraction. When Beyzai invoked myth on screen, it was frequently to comment on contemporary concerns (as in drawing parallels between a legendary unjust king and the modern 1953 coup, via metaphor in a play ). Makhmalbaf’s embrace of Sufi-like imagery and female perspectives in Gabbeh carried an implicit critique of patriarchy and dogmatism . In other words, these masters matched cinematography and design to thematic intent. This is what makes their work “heavy” in the best sense – rich with meaning and open to analysis. It is also what lends them a “poetic academic” quality: their films can be studied in universities (and indeed they are, extensively) for their intertextual and artistic sophistication, yet they can also be felt viscerally by any audience through the sheer power of their images.
In Iran, where overt political speech was often curtailed, cinema became a vessel for truth disguised as art. The great directors used allegory, symbolism, and visual metaphor – tools of poets through the ages – to bypass censorship and speak to the people’s collective memory and dreams. They were true auteurs, akin to poets like Hafez or Ferdowsi in that their work will likely endure centuries, continually re-interpreted. As one looks at the trajectory of Iranian cinema up to the present, the influence of these pioneers is evident in every frame shot by the new generation. Directors today like Asghar Farhadi, though telling contemporary stories, still pay great attention to visual coherence and often cite the New Wave directors as inspiration. Younger art filmmakers like Peyman Moaadi or Shahram Mokri experiment with long takes or theatrical settings in ways that echo the experiments of the masters. Iranian cinematographers and designers, many trained by or inspired by folks like Raminfar and Kalari, continue to win awards at international festivals, showing that the craft has been institutionalized to a degree.
In reflecting on the masters of Iran, then, we celebrate not just individual talent but a cultural synthesis. These directors proved that film could be “cinema, mausiqui (music), and naqqali (storytelling) all in one”, to paraphrase a famous poet. Their heavy, great works stand as monuments in Iran’s artistic landscape, each film a finely constructed edifice of meaning and beauty. As viewers, we may first be drawn in by a striking image – a foggy shore, a lavish costume, a solitary tree, a burst of color – but we leave their films with something more: a piece of Iran’s soul, delivered through a union of cinematography, set design, and costume design so perfect as to seem inevitable. These films, like the verses of Hafez, remain “native and poetic” in ambiance , yet they speak to universal human concerns. They invite us into a world where every visual detail is deliberate and connected to the story’s emotional core, truly demonstrating the golden principle that in great cinema, as in great literature, the form and the content reflect each other . The legacy of Iran’s great directors thus lies not only in the stories they told but in how they told them – with an artistry that merges image, history, and humanity into an indivisible whole. Such is the exquisite achievement of Iran’s cinematic masters, the pioneers and “school” of filmmakers whose work will forever invite both academic admiration and poetic wonder.