The Search

Director: Amir Naderi

1980 / 85min / Digital

On September 8, 1978, referred to thereafter by Iranians as “Black Friday,” the forces of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi opened fire on protesters in Tehran’s Jaleh Square, leaving behind a toll of dead still disputed today. The following year, the Pahlavi dynasty was overthrown, and six months after that, Naderi began shooting The Search, a documentary addressing the disappearance of the many that day who were never included in the official death count. Banned indefinitely by Iranian authorities on its completion—as was its even more little-seen “sequel,” Search 2, which combs through the rubble of the Iran-Iraq War—Naderi’s film, heavily influenced by Alain Resnais’s Night and Fog, is an urgent and anguished document of a colossal crime and its aftermath.