Greenwich Entertainment has released a trailer for the US release of Reading Lolita in Tehran.
The movie is an adaptation of Azar Nafisi’s (played by Golshifteh Farahani in the film) 2003 autobiography about her life in Iran during the mid-1990s.
The movie follows Nafisi as she brings together seven students weekly to read books banned in Iran, including Lolita, The Great Gatsby, and Pride and Prejudice.
The trailer opens with Farahani’s Nafisi arriving in a revolutionary Iran, teaching an English class and says, “books are supposed to make you feel uneasy,” before a shot of students rushing out to protest against people supporting the Islamic Regime.
The next scenes show the seven women meeting up in secret, and Nafisi states how she has chosen these women because she sees their dedication to learning new literature.
It proceeds to show the women being arrested, interrogated, beaten, whipped, and even a shot of a dead body.
Reading Lolita in Tehran had originally premiered on October 18 at the International Rome Film Festival before being released in Italy, Portugal, and India.
The movie mainly follows the underground book club and Nafisi’s life from 1995 to 1997, but her fight against the regime started before that.
Nafisi was educated abroad, earning a degree in English and American literature and a Ph.D. from the University of Oklahoma.
She then returned to Iran during the 1979 Islamic Revolution to teach at the University of Tehran.
However, she was then fired from the University in 1981 after refusing to follow the Islamic dress code and wear the hijab.
After facing the backlash from creating the book club, she decided to emigrate to the United States in 1997.
The movie is set to be released in US Theatres on July 10 and available for streaming on Apple TV and Amazon Prime after it comes out.
