Mohammad Hossein Mahdavian, director of the film Lottery (Latari), recently said in an interview: “What’s wrong with a filmmaker making a hot-blooded film that even has fascist elements, if the audience cheers, whistles, and enjoys it?” He goes so far as to defend his film by invoking Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh, which he openly calls a fascist and racist work. In reality, Mahdavian’s statement is not a critique of fascism but rather an endorsement and sanitization of it. If a work like the Shahnameh can be tied to fascism, then surely Mahdavian feels licensed to make a fascist film too!
But what is the story of the film whose director himself calls it fascist?
A girl named Noshin, driven by poverty and deceived by an intermediary, is sent to an Arab country. After being raped, she commits suicide. The main plot begins here, as a man named Haj Musa, together with Noshin’s devoted lover, seeks revenge for the assault. Yet the revenge quickly takes on a matter of honor. The film portrays the rape of an Iranian girl as though it were equivalent to an assault on the homeland itself. In this way, the director constructs the film’s anti-Arab framework, designed to inflame the audience’s sense of honor and channel a narrow, chauvinistic version of Iranian identity. It seems Mahdavian succeeds in this task, since whistles, cheers, and applause from viewers follow him!
The honor and revenge in Lottery remind us of a similar film: Qeysar by Masoud Kimiai—except that in Qeysar, the revenge does not cross international borders. When the family’s only daughter, Fati, is assaulted, she commits suicide. The rapists kill Fati’s older brother, paving the way for the younger brother, the film’s main character—Qeysar—to appear. He mercilessly kills the rapists and thus becomes a symbol of Iranian manhood. Qeysar is essentially a call to revive a value that Iranians claim as uniquely their own: honor for “namus” (family honor, especially tied to women). That is why Qeysar electrifies its audience.
But Kimiai does not tell the whole story, and just like Mahdavian, he deceptively conceals the true rapist. Fati belongs to a deeply traditional family, one that—like the broader society—sees the woman as namus, and believes her protection requires male honor. Within this misogynistic view, women are passive “honors” whose safety depends on their restriction and lack of awareness. When men are depicted as instinct-driven beings ruled by uncontrollable lust, entitled to any violation or immorality, then the only way to safeguard namus is through restriction and ignorance. In this setting, the victim’s lack of awareness—rooted in society’s traditional view of women—along with the violence of rapists, sanctioned in a misogynistic society, creates the conditions for assault and suicide. Noshin in Lottery shares the same fate as Fati; both are ignorant and unprotected. The difference is that in Noshin’s case, poverty plays a stronger role.
Mahdavian, however, goes beyond the borders in his search for the rapist. By creating a hysterical and emotional atmosphere, he diverts attention from the internal and structural causes, instead presenting Arabs as the rapists. In doing so, he stamps approval on the poems whose fascist content he proudly proclaims. Lottery thus becomes a reproduction of Kimiai’s Qeysar but on an international scale. If Kimiai’s Qeysar was an overt invitation to revive a kind of honor that is itself misogynistic, Mahdavian’s Lottery is an attempt to revive a form of Iranian identity that channels hatred toward the “Other”—especially when that “Other” is Arab.
It is no coincidence that both of these hatreds—toward women and toward the “Other”—are clearly present in Ferdowsi’s poetry. And it is telling that Kimiai, like Mahdavian, also invokes the Shahnameh; in Qeysar, the family’s uncle—seen as the family’s role model—is always holding a copy of the Shahnameh and reciting its verses.
In recent days, alongside Mahdavian’s interview, we also witnessed another crude statement: an article by Mehrshad Imani in Qanun newspaper, titled “Anti-National Remarks on the So-Called National IRIB”, which openly targeted the identity, culture, and language of Turks. These two remarks, along with many similar cases, sound the alarm for public opinion. Today’s racism is unashamed: it is no longer afraid of openly expressing itself; it is bold, explicit, and brazen—parading through the public sphere with a mocking grin, proudly basking in the whistles and applause of its audience.