On Tuesday, the U.S. Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced its judges had nominated "A Separation," an acclaimed Iranian film by director Asghar Farhadi, for two Oscars: Best Foreign Language Film and Best Original Screenplay. Few Americans know it, but Iran actually has a long and rich cinematic tradition. Here are some of the country’s best-known -- and most controversial -- offerings.

Many Western cinemaphiles were first introduced to Iranian movies in 1997 after director and screenwriter Abbas Kiarostami took home the well-deserved Palme d'Or for his film Taste of Cherry. And yet Iranian film has had a long and lively history -- one that began well before Taste of Cherry and has often been fraught with political and social controversy. As the world holds its collective breath awaiting the results of the Iranian election and all its implications, here is a list of 10 films that have stirred the country's politics over the years.

One of the first, if not the first, of Iran's New Wave films, this picture had an enormous influence on Iranian cinema, pushing several generations of filmmakers to focus on serious social issues. Perhaps not the most entertaining movie, The Cow, a psychological drama, portrays a poor villager who is so upset by the loss of his cow that he begins to think he is the cow, eating hay and living in the barn. The shah banned The Cow for depicting the country as poor and backward, but it is rumored that Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini respected the film so much that it was the reason he did not ban movies outright in 1979.

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