Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books (2026)
Directed by: Eran Riklis
Premise: Based on the memoir by Azar Nafisi. Throughout the 1980s and 90s, a professor (Golshifteh Farahani) teaches western literature in Iran under the Islamic Republic. She and several students gather secretly to discuss books banned by the regime.
What Works: Reading Lolita in Tehran is a true story of women coping with a repressive environment through literature. The story is organized into chapters with each section associated with a particular book. In one segment, the class holds a mock trial of The Great Gatsby and their debate articulates the themes and values of the novel but also the larger conflict happening in Iranian society at the time. In a later section, a discussion of Lolita is crosscut with the abuse of a female prisoner. While not exactly subtle, the filmmakers draw connections between the content of books written in an earlier era for another culture and the lives of these students. It’s an effective testament to the utility and the necessity of a liberal arts education and the value of experiencing cross-cultural art. At the core of Reading Lolita in Tehran is a fight for culture and for the future. Like the similarly themed 1984 and Fahrenheit 451, this film dramatizes the place of literature in resisting authoritarianism. This movie plays to its audience. The memoir Reading Lolita in Tehran was quite popular in book clubs and reading groups which tend to be populated by middle-and upper-class readers whose tastes tend to be dull. The filmmakers understand their audience, conveying the repression of the Islamic Republic without alienating viewers who might not have the stomach for violence.
What Doesn’t: The students of Reading Lolita in Tehran lack characterization. We know one of them was imprisoned for sedition and another is in an abusive marriage but this only tells us what happened to them rather than who they are as individual people. The film is missing the spiritual and emotional nourishment gained in exploring the arts and the equivalent rot that sets in from censorship and repression. One of the students is a person of faith but the tension between her and the secular members of the group is unexplored. The film version of Reading Lolita in Tehran lacks a subversive and revolutionary spirit. There is little sense of escalating danger. The women’s reading group is a subversive activity but it doesn’t feel that way. We don’t get a visceral sense of the danger these women have put themselves in by reading and discussing these books. The whole film is milquetoast. In trying to be measured and respectable, it turns out a bit bland and superficial.
Bottom Line: Reading Lolita in Tehran is an adequate adaptation of this memoir. It dramatizes the relevant scenes and the film makes a general defense of freedoms of expression and inquiry. But it’s just too polite and safe for a story about subversion.
Episode: #1110 (August 2, 2026)