South of Tehran will world premiere at the New York Film Festival 2026.
Kleber Mendonça Filho has helmed the documentary short film interspersing his conversations with Jafar Panahi.
It was shot during last year's edition of NYFF.
The New York Film Festival has announced that the inaugural film of its new Encounters endeavor will be South of Tehran, Kleber Mendonça Filho‘s documentary short about Jafar Panahi that was shot at NYFF in 2025.
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 duration of the festival. Chosen 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. The eight-minute film, which trails conversations between Panahi and Mendonça Filho throughout New York, was filmed while the two directors were in town to screen The Secret Agent and It Was Just an Accident respectively. Both won big at the Cannes Film Festival last year and went on to grab several Oscar nominations.
NYFF Artistic Director Dennis Lim said, “The New York Film Festival is, above all, a place of encounter—among filmmakers, audiences, films, and the city itself. We invite each commissioned filmmaker to capture that spirit while leaving the choice of subject and style up to them. Our hope is that these films become lasting records of the spontaneous, stimulating moments that are central to the festival experience and, over time, form a historical archive as significant as our iconic poster collection.”
“I love the fact that my next film was suggested by Dennis Lim, much like a challenge,” said Mendonça Filho. “I accepted the challenge and got to shoot a little film at NYFF last year with the wonderful Jafar Panahi. Happy to screen it at NYFF this year. Thank you, Dennis.”
The NYFF Encounters project is deeply inspired from a four-minute short film by Agnès Varda, Pier Paolo Pasolini — Agnès Varda — New York — 1967, shot when the two iconic filmmakers were in town for the 4th New York Film Festival in 1966. Varda trained her 16mm camera on Pasolini one day as the two of them browsed midtown Manhattan. She later edited the footage together with Pasolini’s wide-ranging reflections on filmmaking, belief, and the nature of reality.
The 64th New York Film Festival runs from September 25-October 12.
