Echoes of Rebellion, Seeds of Freedom, and the Indomitable Woman

Marva Nabili’s The Sealed Soil (1977)

In an interview with Yalda Ebtehaj for Cahiers du féminisme, filmmaker Marva Nabili explains her decision to leave Iran, citing her inability to endure the voyeuristic and sexually reductive interpretations of women by men in film. She expresses a sense of disillusionment and frustration with her professional experiences, concluding the interview with a melancholic statement: “But here in the West, and in Hollywood as well, films are primarily commercial ventures, and no one would invest in films like mine, given the subjects I address and the form in which I work.”1

Nabili’s critique of gender representation highlights broader tendencies characteristic in pre-revolutionary Iranian cinema, particularly the dominant filmfarsi genre, which flourished from the early 1950s until the 1979 Revolution. Marked by melodrama and rowdy spectacle, and titillation, filmfarsi films typically combined emotional intensity with action-driven plots. These films mirrored Iran’s attempts to reconcile its deep-rooted religious traditions with the rapid societal changes brought about by modernization and Western influence. As a form of popular entertainment, it also reflected the socio-political tensions of the time, encapsulating the country’s struggle between tradition and modernity. Despite its popularity, the Iranian New Wave emerged both within and alongside it, introducing a more nuanced and introspective cinema, defined by formal innovation and thematic complexity. Some key films from this period are Khesht va Āyne [Brick and Mirror] (Ebrahim Golestan, 1965), Ārāmesh dar Hozure Digarān [Tranquility in the Presence of Others] (Nasser Taghvai, 1972), and Shatranj-e Bād [Chess of the Wind] (Mohammad Reza Aslani, 1976).

A closer look at pre-revolutionary Iranian New Wave cinema reveals that three women – Kobra Saeedi, Forugh Farrokhzad, and Marva Nabili – worked as directors, underscoring the deeply gendered limitations of the film industry at the time. Among them, Nabili established herself as a trailblazing figure, and stood out for her bold, nuanced portrayals of women that challenge dominant cinematic narratives in Iran. Her debut feature, Khāk-e sar be Mohr [The Sealed Soil], is widely acknowledged not only as the first feminist film in Iranian cinema but also as the earliest complete surviving feature film by an Iranian woman – a milestone in gender portrayal and Iranian film industry.

Through The Sealed Soil and her later work, Nabili helped reshape Iranian cinema by offering a critical counterpoint to its dominant male-centered narratives of the time, contributing to broader debates on gender, identity, and social change. She studied painting at Tehran University in the early 1960s and made her acting debut in Siāvash dar Takhte Jamshid [Siavash in Persepolis] (Fereydoun Rahnema, 1965). Nabili continued her film studies in London and New York, before returning to Iran to produce her thesis film, aiming, in her own words, to create a distinctly Iranian film. To finance the production, she reached an agreement with producer Barbod Taheri, who agreed to work as cinematographer on The Sealed Soil in exchange for her assistance on an eight-hour television series based on classic Persian fairy tales. The Sealed Soil has a transnational production history: as Nabili left Iran for the United States, she smuggled out a rough cut and completed post-production abroad. Though never officially screened in Iran, the film was shown at several screenings across the United States in the late 1970s.

The Sealed Soil, shot over six days in the village of Ghalleh Noo-Asgar in southwestern Iran, is a subtle yet observant film that portrays the experiences of an eighteen-year-old woman named Rooy-Bekheir, played by Flora Shabaviz, in her rural village. The narrative depicts her performing daily tasks – washing dishes in the river, sifting grain, gathering plants – while consistently rejecting the persistent advances of multiple suitors. When the villagers are instructed to vacate their mud homes for a newly built town, Rooy-Bekheir refuses and wanders alone along the riverbank. Her solitude culminates in a sudden, intense emotional breakdown, leading the villagers to believe she is possessed. In response, they conduct a ritual exorcism to address what they perceive to be her affliction.

The Sealed Soil deviates from linear storytelling, and embraces a painterly visual style to reflect the condition of the female subject in a time of political subjugation. The film strongly recalls Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975), in its depiction of the protagonist’s repetitive, often mundane life consumed by domestic labor. Similarly, The Sealed Soil lingers on the repetition of Rooy-Bekheir’s daily life. Captured in static long shots framed within mud-walled huts and dirt-packed courtyards, the film shows women preparing meals on the ground, baking bread in communal ovens, washing clothes, and praying. The emphasis on mundane routine mirrors Akerman’s exploration of the tedium and isolation of domestic life, drawing attention to the repetitive, often overlooked labor that defines women’s everyday existence.

The Sealed Soil adopts an aesthetic of simplicity and precision. Each frame is carefully composed, allowing the story to stretch and breathe, while drawing the viewer into the quiet poetry of everyday gestures and environments. Through its stillness and restraint, the film becomes a visual meditation – privileging atmosphere over plot, silence over dialogue, and presence over conventional dramatic progression. The film evokes a contemplative state, rendering the everyday sublime through the poetics of duration, attention, and silence. A key influence is the tradition of Persian miniatures – narrative-rich paintings known for their vibrant color, flattened perspective, and intricate detail. Though modest in scale, these works convey a remarkable sense of vastness and depth, transporting viewers into imagined worlds. Similarly, The Sealed Soil unfolds within a confined space, yet evokes an expansive narrative through its carefully crafted visual composition, echoing the miniature’s ability to encapsulate entire worlds within a single frame.

The film begins with a medium shot of Rooy-Bekheir sitting on the ground, surrounded by vibrant blankets, slowly braiding her hair. She drapes a red shawl around her head and prepares to make breakfast, her movements measured and ritualistic, emphasizing a quiet grace. In another strikingly composed shot, she carries a tray of dirty dishes to the river. As she walks, the frame carefully layers background activity – a child running, others sitting nearby, a donkey grazing in the distance – into a still harmonious images of village life. Like a Persian miniature, every gesture and placement contributes to the whole without relying on overt drama or motion. Later, in a static long shot, Rooy-Bekheir and three women wash dishes in the river. All dressed in red and surrounded by lush greenery, their presence forms a vivid contrast with the natural backdrop, creating a memorable image, full of life and harmony. The interplay of color and form reinforces the film’s meditative rhythm and recalls Nabili’s early training as a painter. Her cinematic language blends beauty, stillness, and narrative in a way that invites the viewer to linger and reflect, transforming each frame into a visual poem that elevates the everyday into something quietly transcendent.

The only close-up occurs when Rooy-Bekheir ventures into the woods to rest and rejuvenate herself. Here, the film’s imagery turns profoundly intimate and painterly. The camera gracefully transitions to a medium shot of her lying on the grass in tranquil, soothing repose – bathed in natural light and lyrically composed like a living canvas. The picturesque stillness is soon interrupted as rain begins to fall, followed by a carefully timed close-up of Rooy-Bekheir opening her mouth to taste it, palms outstretched in a quiet, meditative gesture. This moment unfolds like a visual poem, rich in tactile immediacy. Far from a conventional village girl confined to a routine of womanly duties – marriage, motherhood, and domestic chores – Rooy-Bekheir transcends these expectations through her spiritual communion with nature. Rendered with aesthetic grace, she becomes a startlingly unconventional figure embodying freedom and identity. The film’s textured play and movement elevates her connection to the natural world, underscoring its meditation on autonomy and the sacred. In a world of prescribed female roles, Rooy-Bekheir’s exploration of her surroundings emerges as a deeply poetic assertion of transcendence.

In the next scene, Rooy-Bekheir sheds her clothing and allows the rain to cascade over her body. Nabili frames her back in a medium shot of Rooy-Bekheir’s back, elegantly keeping the viewer at a distance. The shot emphasizes the autonomy of the character, as if her body is a harmonious extension of the natural world around her rather than an object. The sequence conveys, without words, Rooy-Bekheir’s profound connection to the world she inhabits, a space where body and spirit coexist in unison with rain, earth, and sky. Nabili therefore challenges the conventional ways of seeing that depend on the sexualization of women. Rejecting all suitors, Rooy-Bekheir asserts ownership over her body, refusing to offer it for male pleasure. In this serene solitude, her body harmonizes with the rain, and manifesting a powerful act of autonomy and self-possession.

One of the film’s central themes is the national dilemma between tradition and modernity. In one significant scene, the men gather in the frame’s foreground, highlighting the gender-exclusive nature of decision-making in the village community. As the sole decision-makers, they discuss the future of the village, with the village chief urging the inhabitants to leave their traditional, mud-built homes and relocate to Shahrak, a newly built town in the area. This moment not only illustrates the clash between the entrenched traditions of rural life and the encroaching forces of modernization but also exposes the erasure of women’s experiences, who both as workers and subjects remain marginalized and overlooked in these social and political transformations.

The film’s aesthetics embody this conflict between tradition and modernity. Warm, golden light bathes the village scenes, evoking an almost painterly serenity and a deep, ancestral harmony with the land. In stark contrast, the highway to the new town emerges in a washed-out palette of grays and blues. This deliberate chromatic shift signals not just a change in setting but a rupture in human experience. Sound, too, reinforces this divide: the gentle, organic textures of village life – clucking chickens, the rhythmic creak of carts, the low murmur of communal chatter – are abruptly shattered by the hollow clang of industry; a new way of life slowly unraveling. Compositionally, the village frames people in intimate clusters, their gestures interwoven like tapestry threads; the town isolates them, dwarfed by architecture and machinery, lost in the geometry of urban anonymity. This interplay of light, sound, color, and composition underscores the emotional and cultural chasms between the two worlds.

Rooy-Bekheir resists both the encroaching forces of modernization and the patriarchal traditions of her village. Her decision to remain in the rural setting while rejecting male authority, she embodies a dual defiance – against state-imposed progress and gendered social limitations. Her attempt to learn to read signals a quest for intellectual agency, even as she refuses to draw water from the new town’s well, rejecting urban transformation. The absence of women in decision-making fuels her resistance, rooted not in ignorance but in a spiritual bond with the land and a deep desire for autonomy. Through her quiet rebellion, the film powerfully captures a woman asserting agency on her own terms, resisting systems that marginalize her. In doing so, The Sealed Soil becomes a subtle yet profound meditation on female subjectivity, offering a portrait of a woman who refuses to be defined by the roles society has assigned her.

Flora Shabaviz’s minimalist performance forms the film’s artistic and emotional core. Mirroring Jeanne Dielman’s protagonist, she uses minimal dialogue, a blank expression, and emotional detachment to hauntingly convey her character’s psychological burden. She speaks in measured, almost recitative sentences, often punctuated by long silences that heighten the film’s meditative tone. Every subtle, restrained gesture leaves a lasting feminist imprint onto the narrative. Shabaviz’s performance, closer to performance art than traditional acting, blurs the line between performing and simply existing. Nabili often frames her alone, emphasizing a solitary figure whose physical presence is both grounded and transcendent. Shabaviz’s unique blend of vulnerability and self-possession imbues the character with quiet strength and bodily freedom. The long takes and still compositions, enhances this interiority, turning her presence into a visual anchor for the film’s larger themes of autonomy, resistance, and poetic stillness.

In the film’s final third, the villagers interpret Rooy-Bekheir’s refusal of suitors as possession by a jinni. After her mental breakdown, the community demands an exorcism, urging the village head to cleanse her of this supposed supernatural affliction. A group of women dresses her in a white gown and forces her to sit beside an oven as they burn her clothes, a symbolic act of purging her of her identity and rebelliousness. This ritual becomes an undeniable testament to society’s attempt to regulate and subdue those who defy norms, forcibly shaping the body to fit collective expectations. Yet, in the final moments of the film, the suggestion that Rooy-Bekheir has been tamed appears weak and ambiguous. When another woman approaches her to speak about a possible suitor, she remains indifferent, absorbed in the mundane tasks of cleaning rice and tending to her other domestic duties. She takes a tray – much like in the opening scene – and walks away, once again straying from the women and wandering through the village. In the long shot of her solitary walk through the village, Rooy-Bekheir, though outwardly subdued, exudes an air of untouchability, inaccessibility, and unyielding strength. Here, Nabili crafts a striking and profoundly feminist portrait of her heroine: a woman who bends to no one and nothing, not even the conflicting social forces that seek to control her.

The Sealed Soil is a mesmerizing exploration of stasis, containment, domestic anxiety, and the quiet possibility of salvation. Through long takes and composed stillness, Nabili’s film invites viewers to experience the materiality of cinema – its temporal weight, meditative rhythm, and aesthetic force – giving profound meaning to the notion of women’s cinema. Meticulously restored by the UCLA Film & Television Archive with a funding provided by the Golden Globe Foundation, Century Art Foundation, Farhang Foundation and Mark Amin, the film has yet to be screened in Iran but has found new life through its North American co-release by Arbelos/Venera Films, with hopes for wider availability on streaming platforms soon. A work of rare beauty and quiet defiance, The Sealed Soil stands as a luminous gem in the canon of Iranian classical and arthouse cinema – a testament to the enduring power of feminist filmmaking.

• 1From an interview with Marva Nabili by Yalda Ebtehaj, published in Cahiers du féminisme. [translated by author]