In a cultural landscape often divided by politics and geography, the extraordinary restoration of Chess of the Wind exemplifies how cinema can bridge divides and tell stories that are innately human. Originally released in 1976 and directed by Mohammad Reza Aslani, the film was screened only a handful of times before being banned following the 1979 Iranian Revolution, its negatives presumed lost for decades.
Rediscovered in 2014 when the director’s children found the original negatives in a Tehran junk shop, the film has been painstakingly restored in 4K by The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project and Cineteca di Bologna at the L’Image Retrouvée laboratory in Paris, with generous support from the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation.
Chess of the Wind is a richly textured drama set in an ornate, candlelit mansion where greed, power, class divides, and human desire collide in a hypnotic narrative. Drawing on influences as varied as European modernism, gothic atmospherics, and traditional Persian artistic sensibilities, the film unfolds like a visual poem—its carefully composed frames and evocative soundtrack creating a mood that transcends cultural boundaries.
The new trailer, released alongside the restoration, highlights these qualities: sumptuous interiors, shadowed corridors, and characters caught in an intricate dance of ambition and vulnerability.
More than a recovered classic, Chess of the Wind stands as a testament to the enduring power of storytelling. Its resurrection is not merely an archival achievement, but a cultural dialogue between past and present, East and West. Through cinema, we rediscover shared emotions—love, conflict, aspiration—that bind us all. In a world yearning for connection, this restored masterpiece reminds us that art speaks a universal language, one that refuses to be confined by borders or time.
