Despite the implication within Iranian cinema histories that the first Persian-language sound films were intended for audiences in Iran, these first forays into sound film were screened for Parsi audiences in India. While Abdolhossein Sepanta, an Iranian expatriate living in Bombay, paved the way for many of these early films to be made and starred in several of them, his contribution to the creation of Persian-language sound film within more contemporary film histories of Iran overshadows the labor and reception of these films among Parsis at the time of their release. By examining the production of early Persian-language sound films shot in India alongside their screening and reception in India and Iran, I question why film histories have ignored the role of prominent Parsi producer Ardeshir Irani and his Imperial Film Company of Bombay, along with the significance of these films to the Parsi community in India. I argue that, despite the insertion of Bombay within the film plots, the involvement of Parsi labor in producing the films, and the positive reception among Parsis, aspirations for the growth of a Persian-language film contingent in India faded as Parsi political interests in Iran waned. Iranian trade publications and historians of Iranian cinema eventually came to claim these Parsi-produced films to provide evidence for the artistry of the Iranian film industry during the height of the industry’s commercial success and simultaneous poor reputation. Through an examination of Indian newspapers, Parsi archival documents, and Iranian trade publications from the 1930s through 1960s, I address the divergent histories of these films as forgotten in India and glorified in Iran. I position the reception of Parsi-produced Persian-language films and the ever-present role of Bombay as a filming space as representative of the political wrangling of notable Parsi figures who sought to fulfill cultural imperialist ambitions of tourism to and the eventual establishment of a Parsi colony in Iran. As these aspirations dwindled in the face of diminishing support and the end of British rule in India, so, too, did plans for expanding the Persian-language sector of the Indian film industry and memories of the films as Indian productions. In Iran, however, Sepanta and film trade publications desiring prestige and an increase in domestic production campaigned for the Indian-origin films to be included within distinctly Iranian film histories.