READING LOLITA IN TEHRAN

With Golshifteh Farahani

Azar Nafisi’s #1 New York Times bestseller comes to life in a moving adaptation of her memoir as a young professor of English literature returns to her native Iran in the wake of the 1979 revolution as new religious-based restrictions on women, including the wearing of the hijab, take hold.  Facing gender-segregated classrooms, hostile male administrators and a censored curriculum, she invites seven young women to join a clandestine class in Western literature in her home.  Questions of identity and female autonomy begin to resonate in a personal way through consideration of classics including The Great Gatsby and Pride and Prejudice, as each woman grapples with resistance and oppression in her own life, braving danger to participate in the secret sessions.