The French-Iranian Film Connection is almost as old as cinema itself. In 1900, in a French spa town and then the Paris world’s fair, Mozaffar al-Din Shah encountered the new medium and ordered it brought to Iran.

The first Iranian to set out to make a career as a filmmaker, Motazedi acquired his skills as a young man in Paris. He would go on to open Tehran’s first movie theaters accessible to both men and women.

In the 1940s, Ghafari moved to Paris and into the heart of its vibrant cinephilic milieu, hired as an assistant by Henri Langlois, cofounder and director of the Cinémathèque Française.

With his documentary The Lovers’ Wind, Lamorisse has a modestly scaled, marvelously achieved place in the French-Iranian Film Connection, and a tragic one.

Hoveyda was at the center of Paris film culture in the 1950s and 1960s, writing pivotal essays for Cahiers du Cinéma alongside François Truffaut and spearheading acclaim for Jerry Lewis.