Tehran – Unfinished History

TEHRAN – UNFINISHED HISTORY, directed by Saaed Nouri, is an essayistic documentary film composed entirely of found footage, reconstructing a lost century of urban and cinematic transformation in Tehran. Based on rarely seen material from Iran's national film archives, the film assembles more than 150 archival clips into a multifaceted panorama of a city of radical contrasts: cosmopolitan modernity alongside profound social divisions, visibility alongside repression.

Pre-revolutionary Iranian cinema emerges as a central historical witness, preserving images, gestures, and visions of a Tehran that has largely vanished from collective memory. Instead of presenting a linear narrative, Nouri reconfigures the archival fragments into an open structure that understands history as incomplete, contested, and constantly being rewritten. Transcending the socio-political upheavals of the capital, the film reconstructs a national past and positions cinema itself as a site of memory, loss, and unresolved political imagination.

Followed by an artist talk with Saaed Nouri.