Some of Iran’s best-known film figures walked across a red carpet on Friday in the middle of a busy street in a down-at-heel ­district of Tehran. The actresses and actors from Trial in the Streets, a romanticised working-class story, waved to their fans, whose wait for hours outside the cinema had created a huge traffic jam.

It could have been yet another state arts ceremony. But in fact it was a privately organised affair reflecting a growing boycott of state-sponsored ceremonies by many Iranian cultural figures in protest at the policies of the hardline regime.