This "love letter to Iranian cinema" (Deborah Young, Variety) paradoxically comes from a director who has been critical of this cinema. "It is his love for a cinema that refuses to sell false dreams that makes his own cinematic fairy tale so memorable," writes Sheila Whitaker for the London Film Festival. Once Upon a Time, Cinema... not only has myriad clips from Iranian movies indistinguishably blended in, but has characters, plot, and time taking leaps that only cinema could justify. In this fantasy, a Chaplinesque hero, the Cinematographer, becomes purveyor of cinema to a pompous Iranian monarch. The Shah stands firm against the pernicious influence of movies until he sees his first film and falls passionately in love with its star-who finds refuge from his attentions only by jumping back into the camera.