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CAIRO — Iran’s government cannot silence the filmmakers.

It keeps trying. Films are censored. Directors are prohibited to leave the country and prohibited to return home, forced to cancel projects and threatened with punishment if their films are too probing or too critical of life in the Islamic Republic.

But the films keep coming, and so do the filmmakers.

Bahman Ghobadi’s latest work, “No One Knows About Persian Cats,” is banned in Iran but is being passed around for free, offering a searing portrait of life through the prism of a vibrant underground music scene. The movie has songs with lyrics like these: “This is Tehran, a city where everything you see entices you, entices your soul till you realize that you are not human, just trash.”

The film took the Jury’s Special Prize at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, turning the red carpet of an international film festival into a platform to draw attention to the political c... >>>