TEHRAN — Nearly a year after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s disputed election victory led to wide-scale protests and a fierce government crackdown, members of Iran’s thriving and internationally acclaimed cultural scene have emerged as a driving force for the opposition.
Filmmakers, singers and rappers are, in their own way, pushing for social and political changes, and many are paying the price of speaking out against a government that brooks little dissent. In response to films, songs and paintings inspired by the largest grass-roots opposition movement the country has seen since the 1979 Islamic revolution, the government has arrested artists and markedly increased censorship.
