Do Iranians watch the same Iranian films we do?

Last year, in a post on the then-upcoming Russian sci-fi/horror hybrid Night Watch (2004), I mentioned that “North American theatres often get the artier films from overseas . . . but don’t always get the more popular films.” Now comes this Reuters story on Iranian films, which makes the same basic point:

International audiences have come to know Iranian cinema as a lyrical but slow-paced genre where horses slog through snowy Kurdish mountain passes and children spend two hours looking for a lost banknote.

Such arthouse films may win plaudits at festivals like Cannes, but they are not the sort of movies that break box office records in Tehran.

This summer’s top film in the Islamic Republic was “Ceasefire,” a saccharine comedy in which two sexy newly-weds get so competitive with each other that they have to consult a psychologist to avoid divorce.

“People who spend money and time coming to movies prefer to have fun and leave … smiling instead of solving philosophical problems in dark theatres,” said Pouria Vali, a 21-year-old regular film-goer who has seen “Ceasefire” twice.

The film took more than $1 million at the box office between May and July. Cinema tickets cost about a dollar in Iran.

“Most people like comedies because they do not have much to laugh about these days,” said Navid Etminan, a 25-year-old student queuing up to watch the film.

“Artistic movies can reach out to foreign audiences, but not to ordinary people,” he said. . . .

These sorts of discussions fascinate me, because film buffs often talk about the potential for greater cultural understanding through increased engagement with world cinema, yet the sorts of films that are usually held up as core texts for this sort of cultural engagement often don’t seem like the sorts of films the average people in those cultures would actually want to watch.

I mean, to cite an example closer to home, I’m not sure that the “Canadian cinema” that makes its way abroad is necessarily all that plugged in to the average Canadian, or vice versa, either.