When he moved to Toronto, Faran Moradi invited over any Iranian artist he could find to his small apartment for an informal mehmooni, or gathering.Faran Moradi/Supplied
When Faran Moradi moved a decade ago from London, Ont., to Toronto to work in the epicentre of the country’s film and television industry, he found it challenging to connect one-on-one with fellow filmmakers from the Iranian diaspora. While there were occasional screenings of Iranian movies hosted by the non-profit Farsi Cinema Center, meaningful dialogue was hard to come by.
“At the time, there was a lot of suspicion in the Iranian community, because we’re all second-generation kids, raised by parents who lived through a revolution in which the extremes of poverty had some people lying to each other, cheating each other, just to survive. A lot of us were told, ‘Be careful about who you talk to, what their allegiances are,’” says Moradi, whose 2022 romcom Tehranto playfully explores tensions within the Iranian-Canadian community. “But I’ve always gravitated toward finding Iranians, and coming to Toronto, I wanted to meet everyone I could.”
Faran Moradi.Sana Zabihi/Supplied
So Moradi started doing his own outreach, inviting over any Iranian artist he could find to his small apartment for an informal mehmooni, or gathering. What began in 2022 as three- or four-person get-togethers inside his living room eventually grew to 100-strong quarterly meet-ups, sometimes held at a pub around the corner from the Toronto International Film Festival’s Lightbox headquarters.
“The community is growing with each passing year – we’re all finding each other, from filmmakers who have come here from Iran to those who have grown up in Canada for their whole lives,” says director Jasmin Mozaffari, whose award-winning 2023 short film Motherland is loosely based on the relationship between her father, an Iranian immigrant, and her mother, who was born in Alberta. “It’s from Faran’s gatherings where I’ve found mentors, and been able to mentor others.”
Jasmin Mozaffari won the best director award at the Canadian Screen Awards in Toronto in 2019.CARLOS OSORIO/Reuters
And it is that ever-growing community of Canadian-Iranian filmmakers who have now found themselves struggling to reckon with the news coming out of Iran after the United States and Israel launched war on Tehran this past weekend. The ongoing strikes have resulted in the deaths of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and many of his top military commanders, who have presided over the theocratic dictatorship that has ruled the country since 1979, but also resulted in civilian deaths and widespread destruction.
For some, the moment captures an air of cautious and conflicted optimism.
“It’s such a strange feeling to be happy about America and Israel bombing your country. Obviously, Khamenei being killed, 47 years of this regime keeping Iranians hostage, the head of this snake being chopped off, is a celebration,” says producer Rod Hafezi (the forthcoming horror film Undertone), who moved to Canada when he was 10, and has aunts, uncles and cousins currently living in Iran.
Rod Hafezi at a TIFF event in 2025.Jasmin Mozaffari/Supplied
“The best analogy I could say about the war is that if you have cancer, and you get treated, they take out the part that’s cancerous, but they usually take a little bit extra. And with this war, they’re going after the cancer, but unfortunately there are going to be some casualties, which is heartbreaking. Nobody innocent should die in this situation. But this cancer was attacking these people for so long, that we now understand this loss.”
Yet just as Canadian-Iranian filmmakers possess no single unifying aesthetic or narrative sensibility, so, too, is there no defining sentiment when it comes to the newly launched war.
“It’s such a mixed feeling being in the diaspora. First and foremost, there’s happiness that this murderous tyrant is dead. But those feelings are eclipsed by feelings of, oh God, what’s next? The West meddling in the Middle East has never led to any sort of liberation for Iranian people or Middle Eastern people at large. So there’s a sense of dread that I carry,” says Mozaffari, who has family members living in the northern part of Iran.
“On top of that, within the diaspora, there are a lot of arguments happening. I’m a person who grew up in Canada, I never grew up under the Islamic Republic. So I have to measure my own judgment, to say that I have not lived under that murderous regime. I have to hold space for those who have.”
Screenwriter and actor Pirouz Nemati, who was born in Iran and left for Canada with his parents when he was 13, says that he has noticed a split emerging in the diasporic discourse.
“The majority of people are done with the Islamic Republic and have been calling for an end to it, inside and outside the country. But there is a particular group that have been convinced that war is the only way,” says Nemati, who co-wrote and co-stars in the acclaimed 2024 Canadian comedy Universal Language. “I would identify as someone who is anti-war, anti-violence of all sorts. And now, it’s become that if you’re anti-war, you are framed as a regime supporter. This kind of illusion of binary has been imposed and created for us.”
What many in the filmmaking community can agree on, though, is that Iranian cinema – whether originating from inside the country or via the diaspora – is having an important global moment.
Kaveh Mohebbi, Jasmin Mozaffari and Faran Moradi at a TIFF event in 2025.Jasmin Mozaffari/Supplied
Last year, Mohammad Rasoulof’s drama The Seed of the Sacred Fig was an awards-season darling, with the director having fled the state to Germany. Next week, Jafar Panahi’s dark satire It Was Just an Accident will compete for the Academy Award for Best International Film, with the filmmaker recently being sentenced to prison in absentia.
“That’s when we do come together as a community, to stand behind filmmakers like Panahi, who are making work that openly criticizes the regime in a way that’s very brave, and in an artful, entertaining way as well. To break into Hollywood with that attitude is very important,” says Mozaffari. “But I know there are people in the diaspora for whom that film doesn’t resonate. There are always mixed feelings, but it’s important that filmmakers reach beyond their own audience.”
Like many in the community, Moradi is currently spending much of his days texting in group chats and monitoring social media for news in the region, anxiously awaiting any kind of development in the region. At the same time, he recognizes the role that artists like himself can play in this moment.
“I think that my responsibility is not to advise on policy or tell somebody else’s story, but my responsibility is to speak from the soul,” he says. “As filmmakers, we’re not saving lives. But I think we are giving people a reason to live.”