In Tehran, as morality squads raid homes and fundamentalists seize control of universities, professor Azar Nafisi secretly gathers a small group of devoted female students. Behind closed doors, they read forbidden Western classics, still meeting even as repression intensifies.

Literature becomes the battleground for a war over freedom in Eran Riklis’s impassioned plea for cultural tolerance, set in the fraught years of the Iranian revolution. Amid warnings drawn from the pages of history, this urgent film finds grounds for hope—and courage—in art and community.