In celebration of the theatrical release of Mohammad Reza Aslani’s Chess of the Wind, currently playing a two-week run at Film Forum, Janus Films put together a Letterboxd list of ten more titles from their library which were banned at one point.
Available now in a gorgeous 4K restoration, Aslani’s Iranian drama concerning a noble family who dramatically descend into chaos when its matriarch passes away was banned in 1979, with the country’s revolutionary government citing it as a “dissident cultural product”. Lost for four decades, the original negatives for the film were miraculously discovered by Aslani’s son, Amin, in an antique shop in Tehran in 2015. Letterboxd reviews have drawn comparisons for the film ranging from giallo to Diabolique to Knives Out. The result is a singular vision everyone should seek out when it’s available to them.
Janus Films’s list of other banned titles comes with a handry explainer once you click “Read Notes”, detailing the reasoning for each film’s restriction from audiences in various countries. For example, the earliest title on the list, Luis Buñuel’s 1930 comedy L’Âge d’Or, was banned by the police prefect in Paris “in the name of public order”.
The most recent release, 1977’s Ceddo, from Senagelese legend Ousmane Sembène, comes with a fascinating bit of controversy surrounding the reason for its banning at all. Banned in Senegal, Janus Films notes that, “It’s been widely reported it was banned for its presentation of the conflicts between Islamic and Christian religions and ethnic and traditional beliefs”, then adding, “According to a later account in The New York Times, the banning was not "because of any religious sensitivity, but because Mr. Sembène insisted on spelling CEDDO with two d's while the Senegalese Government insisted it be spelled with one”’, which would be just about the most bizarre reason for a film’s banning we’ve ever heard.
This list speaks to not only the changing of times over the past century, but also to the importance of a company like Janus Films, with their mission to preserve films which may otherwise have been lost forever.
Plenty more exciting backstories feature in the full list—including one film officially banned for “depicting the wanton”—which you can check out at Janus Films’s official Letterboxd HQ page.
—Mitchell Beaupre, East Coast Editor
(Header image from ‘Chess of the Wind’)