MOVIE OF THE WEEK July 10, 2026: READING LOLITA IN TEHRAN

It’s been more than 20 years since writer/English professor Azar Nafisi’s memoir Reading Lolita in Tehran first became a New York Times bestseller — and nearly 50 since Nafisi began living through the events that inspired it. But her powerful story of politics, prose, and female perseverance under the shadow of Iran’s oppressive regime in the 1980s and ’90s still feels extraordinarily timely in Israeli director Eran Riklis’ compelling adaptation, scripted by Marjorie David.

Like the book, the film is structured in four sections, each associated with a particular novel/author, though they’re ordered a bit differently. The memoir opens with the Lolita/Nabokov section, which is focused on the hush-hush literature class for female students that Nafisi (Golshifteh Farahani) conducted out of her home in the mid-1990s after resigning from the University of Allameh Tabatabei. The film flips that section with the one connected to The Great Gatsby/Fitzgerald, which details Nafisi’s initially optimistic return to her home country in 1979 to teach English literature at the University of Tehran. But the hope that led Nafisi and her husband, Bijan (Arash Marandi), back to Iran during its revolution quickly ebbs away, as the Islamic Republic and its zealous adherents severely restrict women’s rights and crack down on anything connected to Western culture, and Nafisi ends up departing the university after refusing to wear the mandatory veil.

The movie doesn’t tell Nafisi’s story in strict chronological order, however, as — like the book — its third section is associated with Daisy Miller/Henry James and is set in the late 1980s (before the Lolita segment). After having had two children, Nafisi attempts to return to her work as a professor at Allameh Tabatabei, only to find it untenable to teach the books she loves under the eye of the Republic. The fourth and final section of both memoir and film is connected to Pride & Prejudice/Austen and takes place just after Lolita, when both Nafisi and some of her students are coming to a breaking point as women living in a country that’s determined to oppress them.

While Riklis’ adaptation firmly focuses on Nafisi as the main character (and Farahani gives a heartfelt performance), her students’ experiences definitely have a place in the story, illustrating the many ways in which women have suffered in Iran since the revolution: Some were arrested and imprisoned, others were beaten, and many have tense relationships with the men in their lives. But the movie, like the book, also makes it clear that the situation in Iran is complex and complicated: Nafisi loves her home and her students dearly and wants to believe both can have a better, brighter, more enlightened future — a sentiment that will likely feel all too familiar to many U.S. viewers these days. — Betsy Bozdech

Team #MOTW’s comments:

Loren King There are many harrowing touching moments in director Eran Riklis’s screen version of Azar Nafisi’s novel Reading Lolita in Tehran. One that has stayed with me is when exiled Iranian actress Golshifteh Farahani, who plays former literature professor Nafisi, consoles herself by telling her husband that at least they’re not living in Somalia or Afghanistan. Such cold comfort comparisons will ring true for those living through backlash to women’s rights and who are witnessing personal liberties decimated and increased efforts to ban books. The women of Iran pre-1979 when Nafisi returned to Tehran to teach didn’t expect the rapid post-revolutionary dismantling of their rights and the establishment of laws that relegated them to second class citizens. The film follows Nafisi as she defies prohibitions on women’s education to secretly gather her former students, many played by other exiled Iranian actresses, in her living room to read and discuss banned books including Nabokov, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James and Jane Austen. Led by the courageous and inspiring Nafisi, the women find a safe place to be free from often oppressive and dangerous situations, to share experiences, comfort each other, talk about art and even, in a moving homage to Austen, to dance.

Jennifer Merin Reading Lolita in Tehran is Israeli filmmaker Eran Riklis’ adaptation of Iranian-American best-selling author and professor of English Azar Nafisi’s acclaimed eponymous memoir based on her own experienceds and women’s lives and prospects in post-revolutionary Iran. In the film, Nafisi (brilliantly played by Golshifteh Farahani) and her husband return from America to Iran believing that their beloved homeland has been democratized and is entering a new era of political and cultural freedom. In the film, which is divided into four chapters, each attached to an English literary masterpiece, we see how the circumstances of oppression impact Nafisi and other women in her circle. It is a must see! Read full review.

Nell Minow: Golshitefeh Farahani gives a beautiful, heartbreaking performance as a woman who just wants to share her love of English literature with others, until even the connection to great works of art cannot provide the comfort or guidance needed under a repressive regime. Eran Riklis evocatively creates the contrasting settings, committed engagement with the characters and ideas of the novels and the cruelty and brutality of the couontry for which she had so much hope.

Leslie Combemale The cinematic interpretation of Azar Nafisi’s bestselling memoir Reading Lolita in Tehran is releasing in US theaters on July 10th. Based on Nafisi’s book, which has been translated into 32 languages, the film shares her experience as a literature professor who secretly held a class for seven of her most committed female students. They read and studied banned Western classics like Daisy Miller, Pride and Prejudice, and Nabokov’s Lolita. Reading Lolita in Tehran is perfectly timed in terms of speaking about the harm that systemic gender discrimination, one that denies equal rights to women, does to a society. It is something that continues to be an international issue, and is getting worse in a number of Western countries, including the US. Read full review.