ITV Doc ‘Inside Iran: War & Revolution’ Goes Undercover In Iran

EXCLUSIVE: ITV has greenlit Inside Iran: War & Revolution. The one-off doc goes undercover and inside Iran, with testimony from journalists and civilians during the 2025-2026 protests and, more recently, the conflict with the U.S.

The film comes from UK-based doc studio Zandland. It marks another ITV-Zandland project following their BAFTA-nominated film Breaking Ranks: Inside Israel’s Army.

Inside Iran: War & Revolution is told from the perspective of an anonymous Iranian journalist. It has access to people living inside Iran and under its authoritarian regime. The doc chronicles the struggles and suffering of protestors in the uprising and shows the brutal crackdown by the authorities, including footage from the mass protests, and inside the hospitals where the injured were being treated and also faced arrest. It goes on to give an inside-Iran account of the hostilities with the U.S.

Capturing footage from inside Iran is perilous. The film spells out the risks the contributors took with an on-screen graphic that reads: “Almost all of the footage in this film was filmed inside Iran by citizens taking significant personal risks.” Given the risk of punishment or even execution, some contributions are anonymized or voices altered.

Zandland is run by British-Iranian filmmaker Ben Zand. Based in London and Liverpool, the doc studio has harnessed YouTube and digital distribution, as well as working with traditional broadcasters and platforms. Zand directed Inside Iran: War & Revolution.

“What this film captures is an impossible situation, and the full range of what it does to the people living through it,” Zand said. “Our contributors describe grief, fury, hope and heartbreak, often side by side, and rarely in the ways outside observers might expect. As a British-Iranian this is deeply personal to me, but the film belongs to the people inside Iran who risked everything to share their reality.”

 ITV’s Controller of Current Affairs, Tom Giles, commissioned Breaking Ranks: Inside Israel’s Army and also greenlit Inside Iran: War & Revolution.

“This is a powerful and significant piece of work by people who have taken great risks to film and bear witness to events which have commanded the world’s attention all year, and which they themselves have directly experienced,” he said. “These are filmed voices we rarely hear from inside Iran: urgent, passionate, fearful and inspiring.”

The film bows on ITV1 and streaming service ITVX on August 9. Maya Rostowska is the Producer, and Josh Reynolds and Ben Zand are the Executive Producers.