Hossein Dehbashi, a 43-year-old Iranian documentary filmmaker, is making a splash in Tehran by giving voice to some of the most controversial figures in Iran: high officials and leading lights of the regime of the shah, overthrown in 1979 during the Iranian Revolution.

Long disparaged as traitors and dupes, the officials should be seen more objectively, says Mr. Dehbashi, who earlier this year published the first four volumes of an ambitious new oral history that gives a say to members of Iran’s ancien regime.

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