Reading Lolita in Tehran

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.

Cast

Golshifteh Farahani

Azar Nafisi

Zar Amir Ebrahimi

Sanaz

Mina Kavani

Nassrin

Bahar Beihaghi

Mahshid

Isabella Nefar

Yassi

Raha Rahbari

Manna

Lara Wolf

Azin

Shahbaz Noshir

Magician

Arash Marandi

Bijan Nafisi

Catayoune Ahmadi

Mahtab