The Westoxicateds
The mission of the Centre d'art et essai de la Cinémathèque québécoise (CAECQ) is to primary program Quebec-made documentaries and independent fiction, as well as international documentaries, animated and foreign films, while encouraging opportunities for meetings between the public and the artists. Its programming is presented in conjunction with the Cinémathèque québécoise’s under the label New releases.
The July 31 screening will be followed by a Q&A with the filmmaker, Gilda Pourjabar
Official Selection, RIDM 2025
Set against the turbulent backdrop of contemporary Iran, filmmaker, Gilda Pourjabar, revisits her adolescence in 1990s Tehran, when contraband rock cassettes and MTV clips from illegal satellite dishes ignited a spark of defiance that coursed through her generation, resonating in her brother’s art and in her own restless pursuit of life in the West.
Gilda Pourjabar
Gilda Pourjabar is a Montreal-based filmmaker and editor originally from Iran. After earning a BFA in Film Production and a Master’s in Film Studies, she built a career in documentary cinema as an editor, working on feature films as well as mainstream television series. Let There Be Light (2017), a scientific documentary film for which she served as a co-editor, was a nominee for SXSW Grand Jury Award and won the Artistic Vision Award of the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival. Her feature documentary debut, The Westoxicateds (2025), retraces her coming of age in 1990s Tehran, where contraband rock cassettes became an outlet for teenage angst and anger, fuelling asubculture of defiance under the Islamic Republic’s hardline restrictions. Through her editing practice and her own films, she is drawn to stories that bridge the personal and political, experimenting with the ways in which intimate family sagas intertwine with broader historical and cultural context.
