Spotlight
South of Tehran
Kleber Mendonça Filho
World Premiere
In Kleber Mendonça Filho’s inaugural NYFF Encounters short film, Jafar Panahi recalls the cinephilia of his youth from the surreal remove of the 2025 New York Film Festival.
- Runtime
- 8 min
- Country
- Brazil/
U.S. - Language
- Farsi
- Year
- 2026
- More information
- Official film page
Screenings
Film at Lincoln Center will present the world premiere of South of Tehran, a new short film by Kleber Mendonça Filho featuring Iranian director Jafar Panahi, made during the 63rd New York Film Festival in 2025. The first film in a new annual initiative titled NYFF Encounters, South of Tehran will premiere in the 64th New York Film Festival’s Spotlight section as part of Spotlight Shorts and screen before Making Marie Antoinette, The Day She Returns, and I Deserve a Lover Whose Every Rise Sets Fiery Dooms Raging Across the Skies as well as part of a special talk with Mendonça Filho, producer Emilie Lesclaux, and cinematographer Evgenia Alexandrova about the making of the short and the encounters made possible by film festivals.
The eight-minute South of Tehran, produced by Emilie Lesclaux, is a prismatic reflection on cinema and memory that emerged from conversations between Mendonça Filho and Panahi, both of whom screened films at the 2025 New York Film Festival: It Was Just an Accident and The Secret Agent (both later nominated for Best International Feature Film at the 2026 Academy Awards).
NYFF Encounters is a new annual commissioning program that invites one filmmaker with a film in the New York Film Festival to create an original short during the course of the festival. Selected by the festival’s Artistic Director and programming team, the participating filmmaker will produce a short film shot at least in part at NYFF. The completed work will premiere at the following year’s festival, creating an ongoing artistic dialogue across editions of NYFF. NYFF Encounters is made possible through the generous support of Executive Producer Mary Solomon.
Film at Lincoln Center will present the world premiere of South of Tehran, a new short film by Kleber Mendonça Filho featuring Iranian director Jafar Panahi, made during the 63rd New York Film Festival in 2025. The first film in a new annual initiative titled NYFF Encounters, South of Tehran will premiere in the 64th New York Film Festival’s Spotlight section as part of Spotlight Shorts and screen before Making Marie Antoinette, The Day She Returns, and I Deserve a Lover Whose Every Rise Sets Fiery Dooms Raging Across the Skies as well as part of a special talk with Mendonça Filho, producer Emilie Lesclaux, and cinematographer Evgenia Alexandrova about the making of the short and the encounters made possible by film festivals.
The eight-minute South of Tehran, produced by Emilie Lesclaux, is a prismatic reflection on cinema and memory that emerged from conversations between Mendonça Filho and Panahi, both of whom screened films at the 2025 New York Film Festival: It Was Just an Accident and The Secret Agent (both later nominated for Best International Feature Film at the 2026 Academy Awards).
NYFF Encounters is a new annual commissioning program that invites one filmmaker with a film in the New York Film Festival to create an original short during the course of the festival. Selected by the festival’s Artistic Director and programming team, the participating filmmaker will produce a short film shot at least in part at NYFF. The completed work will premiere at the following year’s festival, creating an ongoing artistic dialogue across editions of NYFF. NYFF Encounters is made possible through the generous support of Executive Producer Mary Solomon.