ENCOUNTERS 2026: A War On Women

Every year since our founding in 2010, The Bioscope has proudly hosted screenings of The Encounters South African International Documentary Festival. Now celebrating its 28th year as a festival, Encounters returns to The Bioscope once again with screenings at The Bioscope from 5 - 14 June. Tickets are R90. 

SEE THE FULL BIOSCOPE ENCOUNTERS PROGRAM HERE.

A War on Women (13PGV)

Dir. Raha Shirazi | Italy/Iran | 2025 | 102 min

Across four decades of resistance, Iranian women have become a sustained political force challenging the theocratic rule of the Ayatollahs and leading the country’s pursuit of freedom. From the 1979 Islamic Revolution led by Ruhollah Khomeini, which ushered in mandatory veiling and sweeping restrictions on women’s rights, to the White Wednesdays campaign and the 2022 “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising following Mahsa Amini’s death, the film traces an evolving lineage of defiance. Through rare archival material and footage, alongside intimate testimonies, it follows seven women across generations whose lives as activists, exiles, and former prisoners reveal resilience shaped by feminism, courage, and solidarity under systems of enforced veiling and gender control. A War on Women frames the stories of women who imagine freedom in Iran, beyond control and exile, acting as mirrors to society and the collective experience of life under restriction, revealing the rise of a revolution in contemporary Iran and beyond its borders