Considered one of his most important cinematic successes, Masud Kimiai’s 1971 Dash Akol chronicles the urban street life of Shiraz during 19th century Qajar era. Lutigari, an ancient Persian code of chivalry canonized as a core social value in 20th century Iranian cinema informs the plot of Dash Akol, which follows the drama between Dash Akol (Behrooz Vousughi), the village hero, and Kaka Rostam (Bahman Mofid), the village villain. Adapted from the modernist writer Sadegh Hedayat’s short story of the same name, Dash Akol’s filmic adaptation takes on a historical dimension introduced by the black makeup worn by Bahman Mofid in Kimiai’s rendition. In researching the origins of Hedayat’s story in the folklore of Shirazi residents, the actors of Dash Akol learned that the “original” Kaka Rostam was a child raised in the powerful Qavam family, and that his parents were African slaves who were killed by their owners. One night, after refusing Mr. Qavam’s advances on his wife, Kaka’s father and mother were thrown into an icy courtyard where they froze to death. The tortuous intermedial history of Dash Akol reveals the complex ways in which residues of Iran’s history of African slavery resurface in cultural production. This resurfacing of slavery memory is neither transparent, nor does it lend itself to a pure transmission of the past in the form of coherent narrative. Taking Kimiai’s Dash Akol as a case study, this paper explores the difficulty of narrating Iran’s history of slavery through the lens of Iranian cultural production.