A History and a Film: On My Favorite Cake (Iran, 2024)

The woman without a hijab in her private space, something consistently denied visual existence, is no longer hidden or censored. Instead, her presence is centered and made ordinary. In this way, the film invites the viewer to perceive what the official aesthetic regime has trained them to ignore. What was once excluded from the frame reappears, and the audience must relearn how to see.

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With Jafar Panahi receiving the 2025 Palme d’Or, this time marking the second such award in the history of Iranian cinema, a new wave of international recognition seems to be forming. Iranian cinema is being acknowledged not just for its past but also for its evolving present. At this year’s festival, two Iranian films were screened. The first, Woman and the Child by Saeed Roustaee, belongs to the country’s official cinema. The second, Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident, comes from the underground scene. This contrast alone says a lot about the variety and complexity of filmmaking in Iran.

Taking this occasion as an opportunity, this article looks at the Iranian underground cinema. We begin with a brief introduction to the history of censorship in the country and then move toward My Favorite Cake, a film that, much like It Was Just an Accident, has gained attention on the global stage despite being made outside of state control.

In 1900, during his visit to the World’s Fair in Paris, Mozaffer al-Din Shah (1853-1907), the king of the Qajar dynasty (1789-1925), became interested in the cinematograph and tasked his accompanying court photographer, Ebrâhim Khân, with purchasing it and bringing it back to Tehran. Unlike in most countries, Iranian cinema was initially viewed more as a form of entertainment for the royalty.1 Thus, from its inception, it was closely associated with political power in Iran.2

Censorship has marked Iranian cinema since its beginnings, evolving over time while remaining omnipresent at every stage of the filmmaking process.3 Under the Pahlavi dynasty (1925-1979), censorship prohibited the cinema from depicting any image deemed backward. A particularly strict censorship on this matter sought to prevent cinema from addressing sensitive social issues, unless it provided a very moralistic ending.4 In addition to government censorship, various other forms of censorship, such as those from religious groups, pressure groups, and especially internal self-censorship by filmmakers, have shaped Iranian cinema.5

After the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979, a complex censorship system was put in place, innovative on a global scale. The Islamization of cinema introduced a puritanical censorship that not only limited images but also affected the way films were produced and consumed. Scripts and staging had to adhere to strict regulations on moral conduct, imposing that public behavior norms (such as the absence of physical contact between men and women and the wearing of the hijab) also applied in representations of private spaces, often creating incoherent situations.6

However, Iranian filmmakers, in their quest to reveal the reality of their country, have sought to bypass the censorships specific to each era, leading to the emergence of a unique Iranian cinematic language. The resistance of these directors gave rise, on one hand, to a cinematic modernity under the Pahlavi regime and, on the other hand, to the development of underground cinema under the Islamic regime.

An Iranian Cinematic Modernity

In the 1960s, Iranian cinema became an industry and gradually began to take shape with elements that were distinct and more representative of the local culture.7 Mainly driven by documentarians within the Iranian Radio and Television (NIRT), despite strict government control, a modernity emerged that broke away from mainstream cinema. Films began to explore the daily lives of the most impoverished and the popular religious beliefs that Mohammad Reza Shah’s regime sought to obscure. The lightweight camera became more mobile, discreet, and provocative. However, these films were often censored due to their dark depiction of the country, which remained a red line for censorship. Nevertheless, the films existed.8

It was from 1969 that a significant shift in the production of feature films gave birth to the “different cinema” (sinemâ motafavet), which carried forward the modernity initially established in documentary cinema. This transition was marked by iconic films such as Gâv (The Cow, Dariush Mehrjui, 1969), Qeysar (Mas’ud Kimiai, 1969), and Ârâmesh dar hozur-e digarân (Tranquility in the Presence of Others, Nâser Taqvâ’i, 1969).9 Although the government financed some of these films, censorship imposed cuts, especially as the authoritarian power of the Shah strengthened in the 1970s.10

Tranquility in the Presence of Others (Aramesh dar Hozur-e Digaran, Naser Taghvai, 1973)

Iranian Underground Cinema

Currently, Iranian cinema is distinguished into three categories. The first is that of Iranian filmmakers residing abroad, while two forms coexist within Iran. On the one hand, there is the official cinema, which receives authorization from the regime, covering everything from production to distribution in theaters or on Iranian platforms. On the other hand, there is underground cinema, which is the subject of this article.

Iranian underground cinema refers to a form of filmmaking that takes place outside the official procedures for film production in Iran. It is an unofficial cinema that does not require official permits for filming. The main reasons for the existence of this cinema are the censorship and repression imposed on filmmakers and film production by the regime, on the one hand, and the expectations and desires of the audience to see the reality of their lives, on the other. There are two main models for creating this type of cinema in Iran. The first involves simply filming without any authorization, while the second consists of making a film (whether a short film, documentary, or fiction) with a synopsis that complies with the existing filming rules in Iran, but the filmmakers carry out the production independently. These films are typically produced clandestinely, with small production teams and in a short amount of time. Thanks to the internet and advancements in technology, these films can survive government censorship and leave Iran for post-production and distribution at festivals or be viewed within Iran on nongovernmental online platforms. It is important to note that underground cinema does not necessarily focus on political subjects but primarily aims to portray a reality that does not align with the codes of official Iranian cinema. This is the case with My Favorite Cake, directed by Maryam Moqadam and Behtash Sanaeeha in 2024.

My Favorite Cake

My Favorite Cake, an Iranian-French-Swedish-German co-production, is an example of an underground cinema film made with a short film permit for shooting both exterior and interior scenes with a small production team. This film represents an attempt to present an authentic portrayal of life, not just focusing on the Iranian woman but providing an image that has been absent from the country’s cinema screens for years. Through its underground production process, it challenges the boundaries of what is typically allowed in Iranian cinema, reflecting the desire to present a more honest and nuanced depiction of reality that goes beyond the official narrative.

This kind of filmmaking does not rely on traditional political discourse to register its impact. Rather, its politics lies in its form. The very act of filming under restrictions, with a limited permit, and producing a feature-length film through a loophole in the system, becomes a mode of resistance. The film intervenes in the dominant structure of perception – in what can be shown and said, and how bodies, gestures, and spaces are rendered visible. It redraws the map of what counts as reality in Iranian cinema. In this sense, it performs what Jacques Rancière would describe as a “reconfiguration of the sensible.”11 It refuses the prescribed coordinates of representation, opening a space for a different relation to truth, visibility, and speech.

First of all, the film highlights the difference between the private and public spheres. Mahin (Lili Farhadpour), in her home, like other Iranian women, is without a hijab. But when she leaves her house and enters the public space of the street, market, hotel, and park, she wears a manteau and hijab. This contrast, for an audience accustomed to seeing the Iranian woman always with a hijab in her home, is striking and makes them more aware of the absurdity of the images they had seen in previous films.

This scene stages a quiet but powerful confrontation with the consensus of visibility in Iranian state cinema. The woman without a hijab in her private space, something consistently denied visual existence, is no longer hidden or censored. Instead, her presence is centered and made ordinary. In this way, the film invites the viewer to perceive what the official aesthetic regime has trained them to ignore. What was once excluded from the frame reappears, and the audience must relearn how to see. Rancière calls this the beginning of politics – when the order of appearances is disrupted and the invisible becomes visible not as exception but as part of shared experience.12

The female character suffers from loneliness, and thus seeks a man in the public spaces to be her companion. After meeting Faramarz (Esmaeil Mehrabi), she invites him to her home, her private space. The woman, who was on the verge of being erased, now not only fills a larger part of the frame with her body, but she is an active character who, at an older age, also sees the need for love, a man, and sex. She dances and gets the man to dance, pours wine for him, and they engage in drinking and revelry, reminiscent of Iranian miniature depictions of lovers.

This sequence reclaims both the body and desire as valid cinematic materials. It rewrites the logic that positions older women as either irrelevant or invisible, particularly in narratives of love and intimacy. It also undoes the binary image of the woman as either victim or guardian of moral order. Instead, she is shown as desiring, initiating, and commanding her own space. This portrayal challenges the order that assigns roles, gestures, and limits to bodies according to political and religious definitions of decency. It invents new possibilities for being seen, felt, and understood on screen.

Yes, the man in the story, Faramarz, who has even gone to the front lines, drinks alcohol, dances with the woman, and thus breaks the image that the Islamic Republic’s cinema has portrayed of veterans and the sacred defense. He is not even the type of man defined by the regime who cannot control his sexual desires. The couple, under the watch of a nosy neighbor and a government figure who wants to intrude on Mahin’s private space, and with green lighting reminiscent of religious spaces, take ownership of their private domain and, for one night, become the masters of their bodies, emotions, and identities. This house and, through it, the film become a space for everything that has been forbidden in both Iranian cinema and formal life. The film challenges Iran’s repression by featuring the voices of Hayedeh (Iranian singer) and Fereydoun Farrokhzad (Iranian singer and political activist), alcohol, dancing, singing, and the woman with her hair uncovered. The shot under the shower with clothes is also a jab at the cinema that even depicts a woman under a shower while wearing a hijab.

Here, the domestic space becomes a scene of rupture. The house does not merely serve as a setting but transforms into a site of political aesthetic intervention. Everything that has been excluded from public representation – music, intimacy, disobedience, ecstatic states – returns within its walls. And through this return, the house becomes a place where the order of visibility collapses. The woman is no longer shaped by censorship, but instead claims authorship over her gestures, voice, and appearance.

My Favorite Cake, although not directly addressing political issues, is, in its form, story, and mise-en-scène, a political film that targets government censorship. It shows an Iranian cinema that is undergoing a transformation and a rebirth – a cinema that, throughout history, has constantly been reborn despite the harshest forms of censorship.

This is what makes My Favorite Cake political in the deepest sense. Not merely because it shows two individuals whose being together violates the laws, norms, and moral codes enforced by the Islamic regime in Iran, but because it disrupts the established distribution of roles, visibilities, and affects. Its politics lies in its ability to shift what can be felt and recognized as part of shared reality. It opens a space in which both the spectator and the subject on screen can exist in a different way.

Despite decades of censorship and systemic pressure, Iranian cinema has always found ways to remain alive. Sometimes it has done so by bending the rules and at other times by inventing entirely new ones. Today, this tradition of resilience and reinvention continues through the language of underground cinema. It is in these covert yet powerful works that Iranian filmmakers not only survive but also assert their presence on the global stage. Cinema, in this context, becomes a space of resistance, imagination, and visibility. It pushes back against silence and insists on the right to speak, to show, and to endure.

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Devictor, Agnès. “Une politique publique du cinéma. Le cas de la République islamique d’Iran.” Politix 16, no. 61 (2003): n.p.

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