The city, with its nostalgic allure and danger, has had a prominent presence in much of the film productions of pre-revolutionary Iran from the silent films of the early 1930s to popular and arthouse productions of the late 1970s. Tehran and its filmic representations, however, have not attracted much scholarly attention. Similarly, popular cinema has been generally overlooked. The common presumption that commercial films of pre-revolutionary Iran were cheap copies of international productions with little to no artistic quality, has prompted a disregard for this cinema in socio-cultural analyses of modern Iran. This paper will examine various aspects of Tehran’s past and present as imagined in the popular films of pre-1979 Iran, to examine questions of national identity and belonging in a transnational context. Symbolic of the experience of Iranian modernity, Tehran was chosen as a defining setting in the narratives of many Iranian popular films from the 1950s to 1970s. In the hybrid genres of popular films, Tehran was at once emblematic of cosmopolitanism, novelty, and diverse interactions, and representative of decadence, westernisation, and prostitution. Film and social critics of the time considered these films—commonly regarded as “Film-Farsi”—to be artistically cheap and devoid of social critique. As this paper will argue, however, in filmic productions that drew on international cinematic trends, the popular film industry expressed Tehran in an ambivalent form to address urban anxieties, and engage with social and political debates relevant to the time. While some films situated Tehran as a modernised metropolis with transnational connections, others painted it as a city that, in the face of international cultural exchanges and rapid modernisation, was lost, along with its customs, traditions, and old neighbourhoods. Exploring the multifaceted depictions of Tehran in "Film-Farsi," I investigate the connections between the city and national identities, and the social and political implications of such representations in a rapidly changing society. The focus on the attractions and perils of the city in these films, as this paper will demonstrate, worked to evoke longing for a national past that was withering away in light of transnationalism and globalization in post-World War II era.