The Geopoetics of Land and Oil in Iranian Cinema

This chapter examines how Iranian cinema has engaged with land, oil, and extractivism as interwoven forces shaping both ecology and cultural memory. From Ebrahim Golestan’s industrial documentaries of the 1960s to Amir Naderi’s The Runner (1984), Kianush Ayyari’s Beyond the Fire (1987), and Mani Haghighi’s A Dragon Arrives! (2016), the Iranian landscape emerges not as a neutral backdrop but as a geopoetic site where histories of coloniality, war, and resource exploitation are inscribed. Through close readings of key films, the chapter traces how cinema reconfigures the visual and narrative presence of oil: at times as a symbol of national progress, at others as a marker of violence, vulnerability, and environmental harm. Drawing on theorisations of the ‘resource curse’ (Costa 2013) and ‘de-colonising ecomedia’ (Cubitt 2014), it argues that Iranian filmmakers have consistently interrogated the extractivist logic that ties natural wealth to social inequality and ecological degradation. By situating these cinematic texts within the framework of the Thermocene, the chapter highlights how Iranian cinema registers oil not only as an economic and political force but also as a catalyst of planetary crisis. Ultimately, it proposes that the geopoetics of Iranian cinema reveals the earth itself—scarred, extracted, and remembered—as both witness and agent in the unfinished story of modernity.