The Best Iranian Films
Kiarostami, Farhadi, Panahi and the poetic realism that made Iran a festival superpower — Iranian cinema ranked by our composite score.
Taste of Cherry (1997) leads with a composite score of 4.03.
- 1Taste of Cherry1997 · Abbas Kiarostami · Iran · drama4.03
Palme d'Or winner 1997 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #93 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #243
- 2A Separation2011 · Asghar Farhadi · Iran · drama3.62
Berlin Golden Bear winner 2011 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 2012 #2 · Ebert's annual top 10 2011 #1
- 3Close-Up1990 · Abbas Kiarostami · Iran / France · documentary3.01
Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #9 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #17 · Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 1991 #5
- 4It Was Just an Accident2025 · Jafar Panahi · Iran / France · drama2.09
Palme d'Or winner 2025 · Film Comment year-end poll 2025 #4 · Criterion Collection spine #1317
- 5Where is the Friend's Home?1987 · Abbas Kiarostami · Iran · comedy, drama2.00
Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #72 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #157 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1993 #8
- 6The Wind Will Carry Us1999 · Abbas Kiarostami · Iran / France · drama1.77
Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 1999 #2 · Film Comment year-end poll 2000 #2 · Kehr's annual top 10 2000 #3
- 7The Circle2000 · Jafar Panahi · Iran / Switzerland / Italy · drama1.72
Venice Golden Lion winner 2000 · Film Comment year-end poll 2001 #12 · Kehr's annual top 10 2001 #5
- 8Ten2002 · Abbas Kiarostami · Iran / France · drama1.59
Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 2002 #1 · Film Comment year-end poll 2003 #13 · Empire 500 (2008) #447
- 9Turtles Can Fly2004 · Bahman Ghobadi · France / Iran / Iraq · war, drama1.44
San Sebastián Golden Shell winner 2004 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 2005 #3 · Film Comment year-end poll 2005 #38
- 10Through the Olive Trees1994 · Abbas Kiarostami · France / Iran · comedy, drama1.26
Kehr's annual top 10 1995 #1 · Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 1995 #9 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1994 #9
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- 12There Is No Evil2020 · Mohammad Rasoulof · Iran / Czech Republic / Germany · drama1.00
Berlin Golden Bear winner 2020
- 13Life, and Nothing More...1992 · Abbas Kiarostami · Iran · drama0.97
Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 1992 #3 · Letterboxd Top 250 #185 · Criterion Collection spine #991
- 14The Mirror1997 · Jafar Panahi · Iran · drama0.89
Locarno Golden Leopard winner 1997 · Sarris's annual top 10 1998 #null
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- 17Half Moon2006 · Bahman Ghobadi · Iran / Austria / France · drama, comedy0.75
San Sebastián Golden Shell winner 2006
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- 20Certified Copy2010 · Abbas Kiarostami · France / Iran / Italy · drama, romance0.72
Film Comment year-end poll 2011 #7 · Rolling Stone 100 Best of the 21st Century #91 · Criterion Collection spine #612
- 21The White Balloon1994 · Jafar Panahi · Iran · comedy, drama0.67
Sarris's annual top 10 1996 #1 · Kehr's annual top 10 1996 #7
- 22The House Is Black1962 · Forugh Farrokhzad · Iran · documentary0.56
Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #101 · Rosenbaum's Essential Cinema
- 23Children of Heaven1997 · Majid Majidi · Iran · drama, comedy0.50
Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1999 #3
- 24This Is Not a Film2011 · Jafar Panahi, Mojtaba Mirtahmasb · Iran · documentary0.43
Film Comment year-end poll 2012 #4
- 25Crimson Gold2003 · Jafar Panahi · Iran · drama0.37
Film Comment year-end poll 2004 #14 · Rosenbaum's Essential Cinema
- 26A Time for Drunken Horses2000 · Bahman Ghobadi · Iran · drama, war0.36
Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 2002 #6
- 27The Day I Became a Woman2000 · Marzieh Meshkini · Iran · drama, comedy0.27
Sarris's annual top 10 2001 #8 · Rosenbaum's Essential Cinema
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- 29The Apple1998 · Samira Makhmalbaf · Iran / France · drama0.26
Sarris's annual top 10 1998 #null · Rosenbaum's Essential Cinema
- 30Gabbeh1996 · Mohsen Makhmalbaf · Iran / France · mystery, romance, drama0.25
Sarris's annual top 10 1997 #3
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- 33A Moment of Innocence1996 · Mohsen Makhmalbaf · Iran / France · comedy, drama0.19
Letterboxd Top 250 #224
- 34Closed Curtain2013 · Jafar Panahi, Kambuzia Partovi · Iran · drama0.19
Film Comment year-end poll 2014 #39
- 35Blackboards2000 · Samira Makhmalbaf · Japan / Iran / Italy · war, drama0.17
Sarris's annual top 10 2002 #7
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- 37The Chess Game of the Wind1976 · Mohammad Reza Aslani · Iran · drama, thriller0.16
Criterion Collection spine #1145
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- 49Hello Cinema1995 · Mohsen Makhmalbaf · Iran · documentary, drama, comedy0.11
Rosenbaum's Essential Cinema
- 50Divorce Iranian Style1998 · Kim Longinotto, Ziba Mir-Hosseini · Iran / United Kingdom · documentary0.11
Rosenbaum's Essential Cinema
Iran is the clearest modern proof that a national cinema's stature has almost nothing to do with its size. The country turned out roughly 200 feature films in 2017, nearly all of them domestic commercial pictures that never leave Persian; the handful that travel — festival films, several of them banned at home — are enough to place Iran among the small set of cinemas critics rank beside Italian neorealism. This list is built from that traveling minority, and it leans hard on the movement that produced most of it.
The New Wave, in three waves
The films here descend from the Iranian New Wave, which is less a single moment than three. The first ran from Dariush Mehrjui's The Cow (1969) to the 1979 Revolution; a second gathered in the late 1980s around Abbas Kiarostami; a third arrived after 2000 with Bahman Ghobadi and Asghar Farhadi. What holds the waves together is a house style — a poetic realism that keeps dissolving the wall between documentary and fiction, follows children and ordinary people, and finds its drama in a car ride or a missing pair of shoes. Forugh Farrokhzad's The House Is Black (1962) is the usual precursor cited, and it duly appears far down our ranking; the style it seeded took another generation to reach full strength.
What the composite score rewards
Read the ordering and one director dominates it. Abbas Kiarostami's Taste of Cherry (1997) — the Palme d'Or winner that year — sits at the head of the list, and he returns again and again below it with Close-Up (1990), Where is the Friend's Home? (1987) and The Wind Will Carry Us (1999). Farhadi's A Separation (2011), the first Iranian film to win the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, ranks second; Jafar Panahi's recent It Was Just an Accident (2025) is third, a reminder that this cinema's present is as alive as its canon. The score also registers what defiance costs: Mohammad Rasoulof's There Is No Evil (2020) — shot in secret, banned at home, and given Berlin's Golden Bear while its director sat jailed and barred from leaving the country — still places high on the list.
Where the ranking argues with reputation
The interesting disagreements sit lower. The Makhmalbaf family — Mohsen with Kandahar (2001) and Gabbeh (1996), his daughter Samira with The Apple (1998) — carry enormous festival prestige yet land well down the ranking, where accumulated critical weight, not name recognition, sets the order. Membership is drawn by country of origin and then re-sorted purely by composite score, which is why the list will keep disagreeing with any single festival's roll of honour: it measures the whole record at once, not the reputation attached to a signature.