Landmark Iranian Feature Is Restored In Exclusive Trailer for The Sealed Soil

Perhaps no North American distributor does better to enrich film culture than Arbelos, whose major run of restorations continues with The Sealed Soil. Marva Nabili’s 1977 film is the oldest surviving feature directed by an Iranian woman, which is to say: an object doomed to obscurity. Yet the UCLA Film & Television Archive’s work to preserve it has been exhibited at last year’s Il Cinema Ritrovato (which our recap called a “popular ‘best in fest'”) and New York Film Festival; Arbelos will give it a theatrical run starting May 30 at New York’s BAM, with a national roll-out to follow, and we’re pleased to debut the trailer.

Here’s the synopsis: “The earliest complete surviving feature film directed by an Iranian woman, Marva Nabili’s The Sealed Soil chronicles a young woman (Flora Shabavis) and her resistance to an upcoming forced marriage, a rebellion quickly misinterpreted by her family as demonic possession. Breathtaking in its directorial restraint and unblinking in its critique of institutionalized misogyny, this is a too-long-underseen masterstroke of world cinema.”

Find the preview below: