Academy Award-nominated Brazilian director Kleber Mendonça Filho will have the world premiere of his latest short, South of Tehran, at the 64th New York Film Festival (NYFF), taking place September 25–October 12 at Film at Lincoln Center.
The eight-minute South of Tehran, produced by Emilie Lesclaux, is a prismatic reflection on cinema and memory that emerged from conversations between Mendonça Filho and Panahi, both of whom screened films at the 2025 New York Film Festival: It Was Just an Accident and The Secret Agent, both later nominated for Best International Feature Film at the 2026 Academy Awards.
South of Tehran is the inaugural film of NYFF Encounters, a new annual commissioning program in which a filmmaker presenting work at NYFF is invited to create an original short during the festival. Shot at least partly within the context of NYFF, each commissioned film will premiere at the following year’s edition, establishing an ongoing cinematic dialogue between successive festivals.
“I love the fact that my next film was suggested by Dennis Lim, much like a challenge,” said Mendonça Filho. “I accepted the challenge and got to shoot a little film at NYFF last year with the wonderful Jafar Panahi. Happy to screen it at NYFF this year.”
The initiative takes inspiration from Agnès Varda’s four-minute short Pier Paolo Pasolini — Agnès Varda — New York — 1967, filmed when Varda and Pasolini were in New York for the 4th New York Film Festival in 1966. Varda captured Pasolini walking through midtown Manhattan on 16mm, later combining the images with his reflections on cinema, belief, and reality.
“The New York Film Festival is, above all, a place of encounter—among filmmakers, audiences, films, and the city itself,” said NYFF Artistic Director Dennis Lim. “Our hope is that these films become lasting records of the spontaneous, stimulating moments that are central to the festival experience.”
South of Tehran will premiere in NYFF64’s Spotlight section and will also screen alongside select features throughout the festival.
