“Although more than half a century has passed since its propagation,” ʻAlī Assadī, a scholar and writer, concluded in a mid-1970s issue of Culture and Life magazine, “Iranian cinema has not yet reached a stage of self-actualisation.” “In other words,” Assadī continued, “Persian film has not yet developed its own identity.” The relation of Iranian films to the society, national culture and its values and traditions, the author believed, was yet “insufficient” and “superficial.” The future of Persian cinema, Assadī stated, depended on its evolution. The future of the cinema that Assadī spoke of in the pre-revolutionary era has not only achieved a self-actualisation in the post-revolutionary era, but it has gained widespread international recognition in festivals and academia – to an extent that it has been called a “true ‘world cinema.’” Based on a report by the Iranian Farabi Cinema Foundation in 2004, the number of short and feature-length Iranian films screened in international film festivals grew from “88 appearances in 1989 to 980 in 2000.” Regarded as “Iranian New Wave” cinema (sīnamā-ye mawj-e naw), or “New Cinema” (sīnamā-ye naw), this post-revolutionary project has been distinguished from what was – and still is – perceived as the “degraded” (fāsid) industry of the pre-revolutionary era in much of the extant literature on the history of Iranian cinema.