In his youth, Mohsen Makhmalbaf refused to go to the movies as an act of political resistance to what he viewed as the “selling of dreams to a people who lived in misery.” His activism led to his imprisonment during the last years of the Shah’s regime. At age twenty-three, Makhmalbaf finally entered the cinema and discovered his life’s work. Once Upon a Time, Cinema is his loving homage to the history of Iranian cinema and in particular to its earliest work. Using references to films like Hajagha, the Film Actor and The Lor Girl (the first Iranian “talkie”), he weaves a fantastic tale of a Persian monarch who becomes so enraptured with a movie heroine that he abdicates his throne to become an actor.