Shot on 16mm during last year's festival, South of Tehran is eight minutes of two filmmakers talking. NYFF is making it a tradition.

South of Tehran, an eight-minute documentary short by Kleber Mendonça Filho, will world premiere at the 64th New York Film Festival this fall. The film debuts as the inaugural entry in NYFF's new Encounters program: a commissioned series that invites filmmakers with films in the festival to shoot an original short during the event itself.

The subject is Jafar Panahi, the Iranian director whose It Was Just an Accident won the Palme d'Or at Cannes 2026. Mendonça Filho filmed the piece at NYFF 2025, when both directors were in New York to screen their respective features. The two moved through the city together. Their conversations became the film, captured on 16mm by cinematographer Evgenia Alexandrova. Emilie Lesclaux produced; Edu Serrano edited.

NYFF Artistic Director Dennis Lim conceived the Encounters initiative and invited Mendonça Filho to make the first entry. "I love the fact that my next film was suggested by Dennis Lim, much like a challenge," Mendonça Filho said, according to Outlook India. The program draws inspiration from a 1967 short Agnès Varda made of Pier Paolo Pasolini during only the fourth edition of the festival.

The 64th New York Film Festival runs September 25 through October 12, 2026.