Horror generally doesn’t get the respect it deserves at the Academy Awards, which makes it all the more remarkable that the U.K. selected Babak Anvari‘s “Under The Shadow” as its entry for Best Foreign Film at the Academy Awards this year. This speaks not only to the film’s quality, but also how deeply its themes resonate, ringing out far beyond its expected genre borders.

Starring Narges Rashidi, Bobby Naderi, Avin Manshadi, Ray Haratian, Hamidreza Djavdan, and Soussan Farrokhnia, “Under The Shadow” tells a tightly-wound, increasingly nerve-jangling story that revolves around heroine Shideh and her family living in Tehran during the escalating tensions of the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s.

Continue reading The Movies That Changed My Life: ‘Under The Shadow’ Director Babak Anvari at The Playlist.