Award-winning artist and filmmaker Shirin Neshat returns to Asia Society for the screening of Land of Dreams. Described by the filmmaker as one of her most personal works so far (Variety Magazine), the film follows Simin, an Iranian immigrant who works for the United States Census Bureau, on a journey to record citizens' dreams. The film was directed by Shirin Neshat and Shoja Azari, and stars Sheila Vand, Matt Dillon, William Moseley, Isabella Rossellini, and Anna Gunn, among many others.

Join us after the screening for a discussion with Neshat and Yasufumi Nakamori, Director of Asia Society Museum and Vice President of Arts and Culture, Asia Society. This event is part of Asia Society's programming for Asia Week 2024.

Runtime: 1 hour 53 minutes 

'Playful and poignant, Land of Dreams acknowledges in a surreal and satirical way, the greatness of the American experiment while offering a warning beacon for what could come.' 

"A witty and thrilling take on American culture that benefits from its creators’ immigrant experiences and inventive style" 

- Lovia Gyarkye, The Hollywood Reporter

Watch the trailer here: 

Synopsis 

Simin is an Iranian woman on a journey to discover what it means to be a free American. She works for the Census Bureau which, in an effort to control its citizens, has begun a program to record their dreams. Unaware of this devious plot, Simin is torn between her compassion for those whose dreams she is recording and a truth she must find within.

Haunted by the fact that her father was executed by the Islamic regime in Iran, Simin has developed a coping mechanism through a world of fantasy and playacting. She captures her interviewees’ dreams, secretly impersonates them in Farsi and publishes them on social media where she finds a growing Iranian audience.

Soon Simin meets Mark; a drifter, a free soul, and a poet who declares his love for her at first sight; and Alan, a cynical cowboy turned detective, full of machismo and the American spirit of adventure. As Simin enters the triad, she finds the two men's competition and conflicts amusing and silently enjoys the ride.

Playful and poignant, Land of Dreams acknowledges in a surreal and satirical way, the greatness of the American experiment while offering a warning beacon for what could come. 

• Premiere: Venice Film Festival (Horizons), 2021
• Cast: Sheila Vand, Matt Dilllon, William Moseley, Isabella Rossellini
• Directors: Shirin Neshat, Shoja Azari
• Producers: Amir Hamz, Sol Tryon, Christian Springer
• Screenwriters: Jean-Claude Carrière, Shoja Azari

Speakers

Shirin Neshat is an Iranian-born artist and filmmaker living in New York. Neshat works and continues to experiment with the mediums of photography, video, and film, which she imbues with highly poetic and politically charged images and narratives that question issues of power, religion, race, and gender, and the relationships between the past and present, East and West, and individual and collective through the lens of her personal experiences as an Iranian woman living in exile.

Neshat has held numerous solo exhibitions at museums internationally including the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich; Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth; The Broad, Los Angeles; Museo Correr, Venice, Italy; Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C., and the Detroit Institute of Arts.

Neshat has directed three feature-length films, Women Without Men (2009), which received the Silver Lion Award for Best Director at the 66th Venice International Film Festival, Looking For Oum Kulthum (2017), and most recently Land of Dreams, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival (2021).    

Neshat was awarded the Golden Lion Award, the First International Prize at the 48th Biennale di Venezia (1999), the Hiroshima Freedom Prize (2005), the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize (2006), and in 2017, she received the prestigious Praemium Imperiale Award in Tokyo. 

Dr. Yasufumi Nakamori is the Director of Asia Society Museum and Vice President of Arts and Culture, Asia Society. He was previously at the Tate, where he served as Senior Curator, International Art (Photography). He has advised on numerous programming and acquisition initiatives on photography, Asian and Asian diaspora art at Tate Modern and provided strategic management for photography at Tate Britain. He served on Tate’s inaugural Race Equality Task Force and the steering committee for the Hyundai Tate Research Centre: Transnational.

Prior to Tate, Nakamori headed the Department of photography and New Media at the Minneapolis Institute of Art from 2016 to 2018 (where he curated exhibitions of artists including Amar Kanwar, Leslie Hewitt, and Naoya Hatakeyama) and served as curator of photography at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston from 2008 to 2016. His catalogue Katsura: Picturing Modernism in Japanese Architecture: Photographs by Ishimoto Yasuhiro received a 2011 Alfred Barr Jr. Award from the College Art Association. He also taught graduate seminars focusing on the history of modern and contemporary Japanese art and architecture at Rice University and Hunter College, CUNY.