The upcoming Bengaluru International Film Festival (BIFFes) 2025 has selected Reading Lolita in Tehran (2024) for its Asian Competition Category. The film, directed by veteran Israeli filmmaker Eran Riklis and co-produced with funding from Israeli state-backed institutions, follows an Iranian professor secretly gathering young women to study Western literary classics as a means of intellectual defiance against Iran’s theocratic rule.
At first glance, it appears to champion the progressive values of women empowerment, intellectual freedom, and resistance against authoritarianism. However, at a time when Israel is on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) after killing over 50,000 Palestinians, platforming an Israeli state-funded film at a Karnataka government-backed festival raises significant ethical and political questions.
Though film festivals primarily select films based on artistic merit, they also shape cultural legitimacy. This selection may not be a deliberate political endorsement, but rather a text-centric approach by the festival’s selection committee — one that evaluates films in isolation from political and ethical considerations.
Yet, featuring an Israeli state-backed film at this moment is not a neutral act, it risks normalising a colonial regime currently on trial for genocide, particularly in a country with a history of anti-colonial resistance. This detachment from geopolitical realities also contrasts sharply with the Congress party’s strong national position on Israel’s war on Gaza. Karnataka’s Congress government has aligned itself with the party’s national leadership on many issues, and at the national level, top Congress figures such as Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and Supriya Shrinate have vocally condemned Israel’s actions. Priyanka Gandhi recently stated, “What is happening in Gaza is a crime against humanity, and there must be accountability.”
It is in this context that the decision to include Reading Lolita in Tehran in BIFFes raises pressing concerns. Shouldn’t cultural institutions reflect the same level of moral clarity that political leaders have demonstrated in the face of Israel’s war on Gaza?
A film rooted in US and Israeli soft power
Reading Lolita in Tehran is an adaptation of the 2003 book of the same name by Azar Nafisi, an Iranian-born writer who emigrated to the United States of America in 1997 after facing restrictions on academic freedom in Iran. While framed as a memoir of intellectual defiance against post-1979 Iran under Ayatollah Khomeini and later Ayatollah Khamenei, the book was quickly embraced by US policymakers and media as justification for America’s so-called “war on terror”.
The book became a key cultural touchstone for interventionist narratives. It was promoted by neoconservative think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and endorsed by figures such as former US first lady Laura Bush, who cited it as an example of why the US needed to “liberate” Muslim women. This played directly into the rhetoric that justified the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq under the pretense of “promoting democracy and human rights”.
However, the irony wasn’t lost on anybody. The same US administration that presented itself as a saviour of women’s rights in West Asia was actively supporting authoritarian regimes that suppressed those very rights, from Saudi Arabia to military-backed dictatorships in Pakistan and Egypt. The so-called "liberation" came with indefinite detentions, mass bombings, and systemic war crimes.
Given the book’s history of being politically instrumentalised, its film adaptation raises the question why an Israeli institution has chosen to fund and promote this particular narrative.
It is a well-documented fact that Israel uses cultural production as a soft power strategy. Institutions such as the Rabinovich Foundation, which backs this film, are not just neutral bodies, they are part of a State apparatus that strategically funds cultural projects that align with Israel’s broader geopolitical interests. This includes funding narratives that paint Israel’s adversaries, such as Iran, as uniquely repressive, while deflecting attention from Israel’s own human rights violations.
Some might argue that this film was already in production before Israel was formally accused of genocide at the ICJ following the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack. However, Israel’s crimes did not begin in 2023. Human Rights Watch declared Israel an apartheid state in 2021, and Amnesty International followed in 2022, confirming that Israel enforces systematic racial domination over Palestinians. The occupation, illegal settlements, and military repression have been in place for decades.
A film that flattens Iran’s complex history
Critics who have engaged with Reading Lolita in Tehran argue that the film presents a simplistic, Western-centric portrayal of resistance in Iran. While the narrative follows an Iranian professor who introduces young women to Western literary classics, critics point out that the film suggests that intellectual freedom is primarily derived from Western ideals. By framing resistance through engagement with Western literature, the film, they argue, sidelines Iran’s own long history of feminist and intellectual movements that have challenged authority on their own terms.
Moreover, critics note that the film, like the book, largely omits the role of Western intervention in shaping modern Iran. The US-backed Shah imposed state-driven Westernisation, crushing leftist and nationalist opposition, which in turn contributed to the very theocratic rule the film critiques. By portraying Iran’s history as a binary struggle between authoritarianism and Western liberalism, the film risks reinforcing the interventionist logic that political change must come from external influences rather than from within Iranian society itself.
None of this, however, suggests that Iran’s current government is beyond reproach. The Islamic Republic has a well-documented record of suppressing political dissent, enforcing severe restrictions on women, and persecuting activists and minorities. Iranian feminists, artists, and dissidents continue to resist state repression, often at great personal risk. What critics argue is that the film selectively amplifies one form of oppression while erasing another, fitting neatly into a geopolitical framework where Iran’s repression is highlighted while US-backed violations are ignored.
Should BIFFes reconsider?
At a time when Israel is on trial for genocide, BIFFes’ decision to showcase an Israeli state-funded film cannot be viewed in isolation. This is not just about artistic merit, it is about the political implications of platforming a film backed by a regime accused of horrendous war crimes.
During apartheid, India was among the first nations to boycott South Africa, refusing diplomatic, economic, and cultural engagement with a racist regime. That moral clarity shaped global resistance. Today, with Israel enforcing a system that is widely being recognised as apartheid, shouldn’t the same standard apply?
This is not about banning or canceling art. It is about refusing complicity in cultural whitewashing.
Vijeth Balila is a consultant with a policy research and digital marketing firm.
Views expressed are the author’s own.