Sacred Defense cinema is a genre unique to Iranian cinema and a vehicle for conveying the values of the Sacred Defense (Iran–Iraq War) era. This genre has followed a path of highs and lows from the war years to the present.
The Namafar Center has set out to analyze the performance of Sacred Defense genre films in Iranian cinema and has examined Sacred Defense cinema in terms of the number and share of works, audience, and revenue from 1364–1402 (1985–2024).
The number of Sacred Defense genre films followed an upward trend from 1364–1385 (1985–2007). At the same time, the Sacred Defense genre's share of Iranian feature films released has declined over the past two decades.
The audience and revenue share of Sacred Defense cinema has also fallen considerably since 1394 (2015/16), and this genre's box office revenue has collapsed.
Although more than one-quarter of Iran's cinema revenue in 1388 (2009/10) belonged to the Sacred Defense genre, only 7 Sacred Defense films were released that year. This shows that suitable quality and attention to audience taste matter more to the success of Sacred Defense cinema than the number of works produced.
What is your forecast for the future of Sacred Defense cinema?
See the original infographic (Persian)
Machine-translated from Persian by Namafar; the Persian original is authoritative. Read the original in Persian