Rehearsals for a Revolution

Over five chapters, each focusing on a relative or friend, Iranian filmmaker Pegah Ahangarani sketches her life story defined by expressions of resistance. Drawing from personal archives, home videos, footage from gripping street protests, and recorded voices, she retraces more than 40 years of Iran’s history. From the early days of 1979, until the war that began in 2026, she pieces together intimate and collective memories, forming a portrait of a country shaped by political repression and in constant hope for a revolution.

Winner of the Best Documentary prize at the Cannes Film Festival, Rehearsals for a Revolution is a vital, intimate, and newly urgent record of life inside Iran, the indefatigable spirit of its people, and a poignant and poetic look at its moments of promise and disappointment.