There are a number of great classics in which the characters speak a language other than their own. As members of the audience we ‘suspend our disbelief’ and simply assume they’re communicating in their native tongue. We fail to notice that the characters in Dr. Zhivago or Lawrence of Arabia should not be speaking with one another in English.

 

The same cannot be said about Made in Iran, and the reason is simple: The film is about an Iranian boxer who has recently emigrated to America. It is simply not believable for him to go about life carrying conversations with native speakers without any language barrier.

 

This problem is only compounded by the prominence of the notions of race, national pride, and identity in certain scenes. The scenes in question lose all their impact when both parties speak in Farsi. Take, for instance, the scene at the beginning in which Ali gets into a tussle with an American fellow who made a disparaging cultural remark against another Iranian. It is just odd to hear an American – in America – making a cultural remark against an Iranian in Farsi.