Little Rock Film Festival 2009

In the wake of the fundamentalist revolution that overtook Iran in 1979, the last thing most people would have expected was for the nation to spawn one of the world's most interesting national cinemas. But such Iranian films as The Taste of Cherry, The Children of Heaven, and The White Balloon have won enthusiastic acclaim at a number of international film festivals and impressed filmgoers around the globe. Friendly Persuasion: Iranian Cinema After the Revolution is a documentary that examines the new Iranian cinema, as such filmmakers as Abbas Kiarostami, Majid Majidi, Jafar Panahi, Moshen Makhmalbaf, and Dariush Mehrjui discuss the new renaissance in their nation's cinema, and how they've learned to wring creative mileage out of the often tricky details of working around their government's severe censorship laws.