“Young women have taken more autonomy over their bodies in the years since Amini’s death; in Tehran, Under the Skin, Afsaneh Salari creates a fascinating documentary about one way that manifests itself, including changing your body to gain ultimate beauty.”

“The transformation of forbidden bodies. Forbidden to dance. Forbidden to sing. Forbidden to be seen.”

An epidemic of nose jobs. That is what Iranian-born (but currently Paris-based) director Afsaneh Salari sees when she returns to Iran’s capital Tehran in 2025. Like everywhere else, social media has made Iranians, and in particular women, conscious about their bodies, and not in a positive way in most cases. That is why plastic surgery is a booming business. Noses, breasts, buttocks, tummies; a little cut here, some fat removal there, and suddenly the patients of Tehran’s most sought-after surgeons feel much better. Not necessarily ‘prettier’, whatever that means in the eye of the beholder, as a lot of the women (the patients are mostly female) shown in Salari’s documentary Tehran, Under the Skin are perfectly fine even before the reconstructive molding begins. A new world opens up for the director, in a country she thought she knew so well. She draws a parallel between the continuous reconstruction of her city, and of the faces and bodies that inhabit it; she will go back to the metaphor of buildings several times, using cracked plaster walls and crumbling pavement as interludes to the patients that go through pre-op interviews and operating rooms. An insightful look at a society in flux, in particular its female component, Tehran, Under the Skin shows modern Iran (or at the very least its capital) struggling with the image of the female body, underlining that the global trend of increased body consciousness under the influence of social media has not passed Iran by.

Salari’s observational style is unadorned, while embedding herself in the offices of two plastic surgeons, one male and one female. The film is a mixture of a Wiseman-esque portrait of this reconstructive industry and Salari interacting with her subjects when she hears things that she cannot fathom. Her astonishment after hearing that in some places in Iran women can wear a bikini is probably only matched by that of the audience, whose knowledge of Iranian society and the role of women in it is mostly formed by Western media. The locals, however, show a very open and even pragmatic approach to reconstructive surgery. With the price of a nose job roughly equaling that of a mobile phone, a new face has become accessible for a lot of people, even if the dollar may be on the rise because of the US bombing the country. It is one of the few times US interference in Iranian society is mentioned (one patient’s mom wearing a sweater with a ‘Team USA’ logo is hilarious, regardless of whether it was intentional or not). The film shows that despite this looming threat life goes on for most Iranians. It is a portrait of regular, modern people who have succumbed to the idea of the perfect image just like the rest of us. The way they freely speak about these subjects with a frankness and open-mindedness is revelatory, especially since most women in the film don’t wear the (in Iran) compulsory hijab.

That is not the full picture of course, and Salari wisely contrasts moments where a surgeon (male, no less) records the results of a butt-lift from the operating room, to be posted later on Instagram, with frequent reminders that there is still enormous pressure on the autonomy of the female body in Iran. As that same surgeon later exclaims, sitting behind his office desk, “Iranian society is bipolar“. The film shows images of a Chastity and Hijab rally, with women explaining that the modesty of the hijab is vital for the existence of Iranian society. They quote a Quran verse that states wearing the hijab is an order of God. Giant murals of former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini still hang over the city like a spectre of conservative religious views. At times the clinics of these modern sculptors (one of them compares himself to Michelangelo, with the way he sculpts people’s rear ends) feel like a safe haven for women, and not just because the work of these surgeons is one way for them to reclaim their bodies from an oppressive patriarchal state.

Salari further illustrates this by a series of interludes focusing on the different phases women go through in life, and how they are made to feel ashamed about their body at each of these key moments: when they first develop breasts, when they go to their first university party, when they get pregnant and give birth to their first child. At each turn they are berated, denigrated, made to feel a lesser being. Salari notes that the Woman, Life, Freedom movement, started after the death of Mahsa Amini, is changing things (although there has been a crackdown recently on ‘immodest dress’). Women are slowly trying to claim their place as equals, with equal rights and desires. Plastic surgery to make their appearance more beautiful, which the hijab and other clothing are meant to hide from the world, is one aspect of that claim. The young employees at one of the clinics make a mockery of the hijab as they apply their makeup and ready themselves to ‘pick up boys’. Young women have taken more autonomy over their bodies in the years since Amini’s death; in Tehran, Under the Skin, Afsaneh Salari creates a fascinating documentary about one way that manifests itself, including changing your body to gain ultimate beauty.