Masud Kimiai is one of a few prominent filmmakers who continue to direct important films after the Islamic revolution. In depicting the battles of male protagonists, his films provide a window onto the construction of masculinity and the struggles with modernity in Iranian society. His second film, Qaisar (1969), a major box office and critical success, transformed Iranian commercial cinema. The film’s male hero, associated with the chivalry and manliness of Shahnameh’s warriors and Shi’a martyrs, becomes a model not only for thousands of young viewers but also for Iran’s tough-guy movie genre. As Hamid Naficy in A Social History of Iranian Cinema (vol. 2) writes, the film elegizes the disappearance of the traditional “values of chivalry and manliness,” which are replaced by “vigilante thugs or by an indifferent authoritarian state” (299). Personal revenge was read as a code for “citizens’ revenge against governmental or upper-class oppression” (232). Kimiai’s early films foreshadowed the revolution. After the revolution, the rebellious male hero, who fought for honor, tradition, and responsibility, was transformed into the Islamicate warrior. There was little room for the individual revolt against the state. But with the end of Iran-Iraq war, the importance of the male hero as a warrior had become less relevant. There was a need for a new male model. Kimiai’s films change with the transformations of masculinity. For example, Protest (2000), made during the first term of Khatami’s reformist presidency, is a direct response to the heroic portrayal in Qaisar. The film begins with Amir leaving prison after 12 years for murdering the unfaithful fiancée of his younger brother Reza. Amir, a hero in jail, finds himself a stranger in the city. Reza admonishes him for the honor killing, arguing that there is no place for such acts in the new society. For the reformists, violence and rebellion are not a solution. Instead, there should be law, justice, and democracy. Reza works at a pizzeria and spends his time with other male and female university students discussing current events and their possible role in society. Another male character, Ghasem, is an opium-addict who is lost -- haunted by war and the death of his martyred brother. There is a crisis of masculinity. The male characters can no longer rely on traditional masculine identity to guide their actions. They are either lost or struggling to find their role in modern Iran.