There has never been a moment in the long history of Iranian cinema when it was confined to its current frontiers. The very first Iranian sound film, Dokhtar-e Lor/Lor Girl, 1932, also known as The Iran of Yesterday and The Iran of Today, was produced by Ardeshir Irani and Abdolhossein Sepanta in the Imperial Film Company in Bombay. There is a larger frame of reference that extends from Europe to the Ottoman and Russian empires all the way to Egypt and India, which was the site of the rise of Persian prose and poetry as well as Iranian visual and performing arts.

The figure of Forough Farrokhzad (1935-1967), a leading poet of her time, shines over the history of Iranian cinema. With a single short documentary, The House is Black (1962), Farrokhzad set Iranian film on a creative path from which it has not diverged since. Shot on location in a leper colony, The House is Black defined the fusion of fact and fiction in a unique and ground-breaking way.