Filmgoers flock to screens in newly built shopping centres, as critics warn that other genres are being sidelined

As they rose to their feet for the national anthem, the mood among the crowd was sombre. Iran’s leading film festival, usually seven days of red carpet premieres and gong-giving, was forgoing the glamour of the silver screen as the country outside suffered the chill of economic hardship.

The organisers had months earlier said the festival would match the downcast mood of a country where sanctions and escalating political turmoil have hit the living standards of many ordinary Iranians. The death of Ezatollah Entezami, a celebrated actor of the 1960s Persian new wave, known in Iran simply as Mr Actor, further dampened spirits.

The pared-back celebrations in Tehran’s Vahdat Hall earlier this month, however, belied an industry in robust health – thriving in large part due to the same economic pressures that kept the glitz from the awards ceremony on the festival’s closing night. Iranians are flocking to the cinema in record numbers, attracted by relatively affordable ticket prices and a slew of mood-lifting new comedies.

Abolhassan Davoudi’s Millipede. Photograph: PR company handout

One, Millipede, has broken all box office records and taken in nearly 350bn rials (£6.5m) since its release this summer. Directed by Abolhassan Davoodi, it tells the story of an amputee criminal who finds a doctor at a war veteran’s hospital who wants to marry a wounded former soldier.

Mani Haghighi, whose comedy Pig was nominated for the festival’s biggest prize, said difficult times were encouraging people to go to the cinema. “The reason why people are flocking to watch comedies is because they’re so depressed,” he said, comparing contemporary Iran to Depression-era America and the golden age of the Hollywood screwball comedy.

“The mood is sombre in general in the country because there is a complicated mixture of various crises coming together at this certain moment,” he said. “We have the danger of sanctions looming, but there’s also internal political tension. All these are converging and making people a little disconcerted.”

It was now becoming almost impossible to find funding for films that were not comedies, Haghighi said. He added that comedic movies were “a trend that has worked … Producers have realised this is some kind of jackpot.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Mani Haghighi, centre, with the cast of Pig at the 2018 Berlin film festival. Photograph: Stefanie Loos/AFP/Getty Images

The film-maker’s first foray into the genre was 2015’s romantic comedy 50kg of Sour Cherries. Pig is somewhat darker – as a serial killer goes on a murder spree of Iranian directors, one blacklisted film-maker wants to know why nobody has come for him yet.

Key to their successes has been a boom in the construction of shopping centres across Iran. “One after the other, they’re opening and all of them have these newly built cinemas in them, they’re clean, they’re up to date technologically. Now all kinds of people go to the movie theatre,” Haghighi said. Cinema tickets in Iran range from 80,000 rials (£1) to 150,000 rials.

The reign of the comedies is a departure for a film-making tradition known internationally for the poetic minimalist style of directors such as the late Abbas Kiarostami or the social realism of Asghar Farhadi’s Oscar-winning A Separation.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Juliette Binoche in Abbas Kiarostami’s Certified Copy. Photograph: Publicity image from film company

Film critic Bahman Abdollahi said he was concerned that the commercial success of comedies was resulting in other genres being sidelined.

“I don’t call this a good phenomenon, because in cinema we need all sentiments, we need happiness, we need sorrow, we need fear, we need horror,” he said. “Only a few producers are active, the majority of Iran’s cinema community have no work to do.”

Film-makers in all genres, comedy included, nevertheless face the challenge of getting their work past the Islamic Republic’s censors. Those who vet scripts were marginally more liberal than in the past, Haghighi said, but there was an increase in censorship though distribution. He said Pig was given screening times at 9am and 11am only.

The festival is organised by House of Cinema, Iran’s main film industry guild. According to the festival’s director, 43 films made during the last year have not been allowed to be screened in public.

But those giving speeches at the festival were unafraid to take on the Iranian establishment. Vahid Jalilvand, who won the best film for the drama No Date, No Signature, castigated the authorities for ignoring social issues highlighted by film-makers. Hamed Behdad, winner of best actor, urged authorities to release Niloufar Bayani and other environmental activists held on spying charges. “She’s burning in that cage,” he said.

Keyvan Kasirian, a prominent critic who attended the ceremony, said it was no surprise that more people were going to the cinema and that many were opting for comedy. “Maybe it’s an additional need from society to forget everything for two hours,” he said.