Iranian cinema, dating from 1900, is among the oldest cinemas in the Middle East. While its representation of sexualities and gender on screen has always been controversial, this has been most contentious since the early 1980s when establishing an “Islamic cinema” became a point of concern for the new ruling elite in Iran. That is, whereas in pre-revolutionary cinema, especially in the commercial and popular luti genre of films, there were charges that women were often cast in roles that were either passive or overly-sexualized (Lahiji 2002, Naficy 2001), the…