Animated Drama TEHRAN TABOO, Focused on Sexual Hypocrisy in Iran
Opens March 2 in San Francisco, CA @ the Roxie & March 9 in Los Angeles, CA @ the Laemmle

New York, NY – Kino Lorber is pleased to announce the release of Ali Soozandeh’s TEHRAN TABOO, an animated feature that juggles multiple stories to explore the sexual double-standard behind contemporary Iran, in San Francisco, CA, and Los Angeles, CA.

The film had its world premiere at the prestigious Cannes Critics’ Week before segueing to a competition slot at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival. Living in exile in Germany since age 25, Iranian-born Soozandeh cannily uses animation to solve the problem of not being able to film in Tehran.

Blending multiple narratives into a complex picture of contemporary life in Iran’s most populous city, TEHRAN TABOO follows a young woman in need of an operation to “restore” her virginity; a divorce judge (in the Islamic Revolutionary Court) who extorts favors from a prostitute; a pregnant woman desperate to work for a living so she may live independently; and young women (purportedly virgins) being sold to Dubai for large sums of money.

The result is a complicated portrait of a social order in which women are at the bottom rung of a ladder built on religion, the law, and plain old misogyny.