15/10/2025
Nasser Taghvai, a renowned Iranian filmmaker and creator of enduring works, who for years resisted censorship and chose seclusion rather than making films under official policies, has passed away at 84. He was a pioneer of the Iranian New Wave and, at the same time, widely known to the public for his popular works. His legacy shaped my generation through “Captain Khorshid”—a creative adaptation of Hemingway—and the generation before mine through “My Uncle Napoleon.”
In Iran, Nasser Taghvai’s work cuts through the fog of easy explanations. “My Uncle Napoleon” skewers the reflex to blame a hidden enemy for every bruise in public life. When institutions of truth and collective action are weak, paranoia becomes a shared language—and responsibility evaporates. “Captain Khorshid” answers with another language: practice. The captain navigates a borderland where legal paths are blocked, risk is shared, and choices are stubbornly gray. He balances loyalty, livelihood, and care, paying the price of each decision. That, not slogan or hero-worship, is the ethic we need.
Today’s solidarity spaces—from Tehran to the diaspora—often inherit the Uncle’s mindset: single-cause stories that flatten local realities into geopolitical scripts. Taghvai points elsewhere. Organize many voices—workers, women, qu**rs, ethnic and religious minorities—in the same room. Translate pain both ways, not just toward Western attention. Replace types with characters and metrics: what changed, for whom, by when?
Standing on the desk, as in “Dead Poets Society,” is only the first move—changing the frame. The second is the captain’s move: translating the view into material action. Networks over heroes; outcomes over noise. That is how Iran moves past paranoia—by doing, together. Measure results, then repeat—quietly, persistently, with others, over time.
Nasser Taghvai, a renowned Iranian filmmaker and creator of enduring works, who for years resisted censorship and chose seclusion rather than making films under official policies, has passed away a…
