CHESS OF THE WIND

CHESS OF THE WIND is a miraculous recovery of a missing piece of cinema history. Mohammad Reza Aslani’s film is set inside an ornate old mansion where a family fortune becomes the centre of a struggle between a disabled heiress, predatory relatives and servants moving between loyalty and betrayal. But what makes it unforgettable for me isn’t just the intrigue. It’s the atmosphere. Every room seems to hold suspicion, every corridor feels charged. Criterion calls it a work that blends European modernism, gothic horror and classical Persian art, which gets very close to why the film feels so singular.

The lore around CHESS OF THE WIND is part of what makes showing it so exciting. It screened in 1976, then effectively vanished for decades after being condemned and disappearing from circulation. This masterpiece has since been resurrected through Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project and Cineteca di Bologna in collaboration with Aslani and his family. That history matters because the film doesn’t feel like a curiosity. It feels major. It’s one of those rediscoveries that makes the map of world cinema look incomplete without it.