TV & Movies - Diba Magazine

Delshodegan (1991): Music, Memory, and Exile in Ali Hatami’s Cinema

Published: January 22, 2026 11:39 AM

A poetic requiem for Iranian classical music, Delshodegan stands as one of Ali Hatami's most personal and elegiac films, where sound, loss, and cultural memory converge in quiet defiance against oblivion.

Felt: The Quiet Architecture of Wool and Tradition in Shiraz

Published: January 22, 2026 09:32 AM

In the workshops of Shiraz, felt is not woven but slowly coaxed into being, shaped by moisture, pressure, and human touch. Made entirely from wool and natural elements, this ancient craft carries the memory of hands, time, and landscape in every fiber.

Forugh Farrokhzad: Poet of Modern Iran

Published: January 20, 2026 01:36 PM

Few literary figures have shaped modern Iranian consciousness as powerfully and controversially as Forugh Farrokhzad. A poet, filmmaker, and cultural revolutionary, she broke with patriarchal norms and poetic conventions of mid-20th-century Iran. Forugh Farrokhzad, Poet of Modern Iran, edited by Dominic Parviz Brookshaw and Nasrin Rahimieh, offers a definitive exploration of her life, work, and lasting legacy.

Mother Mary

Published: December 26, 2025 10:57 AM

Mother Mary positions itself not as a narrative-driven film, but as a cultural examination of image-making in contemporary pop culture. Through the convergence of cinema, fashion, and sound, the film explores how bodies become personas, garments become structures of power, and visibility itself turns into a controlled performance. Rather than offering resolution, it constructs a space of observation, where image is not consumed, but negotiated.

The Brutalist: A Cinema of Structure and Control

Published: December 26, 2025 11:38 AM

The Brutalist does not simply depict architecture; it constructs a visual language where power is spatial, the body is regulated, and clothing operates as a secondary architecture. This essay reads The Brutalist as a study of form, discipline, and scale, where concrete, tailoring, and silence converge to produce an image of modern authority that continues to shape contemporary fashion and visual culture.

Abbas Kiarostami and the Ethics of Seeing: Cinema Between Image, Truth, and Responsibility

Published: December 26, 2025 11:33 AM

In Abbas Kiarostami’s cinema, images are never neutral. Every frame is an ethical decision, every act of looking a form of responsibility. Through silence, omission, and restraint, he transforms cinema from a storytelling device into a space of reflection, where truth is not fixed, but negotiated between the camera, the world, and the viewer. Kiarostami does not tell us what to see; he asks a more difficult question: how should we look?