Counter-memories can also be tracked down where we least suspect or expect them to be, as Viktor Ullmann shows in his contribution »Spiritual Counter-Memories of the War: Mohammad Ali Ahangar’s Recent Contributions to the Sīnemā-ye Defāʿ-ye Moqaddas.« Although liberals are by far the most active group of filmmakers challenging the state’s hermeneutical hegemony on the past, recent developments show a small niche of conservative religious films that intend to reinvent the ›Sacred Defense cinema‹ genre through a counter-reading of the Iran-Iraq War (and its aftermath). These films take their cue not from social criticism, as, for instance, Mohsen Makhmalbaf or even Ebrahim Hatamikia did in the 1980s and 1990s, but – and herein lies their subversive character – from a spiritual approach. The most prolific proponent of this niche is the Abadan-based director Mohammad Ali Ahangar. Starting with his first feature film, Farzand-e Khāk/Child of Soil (2008), all his popular works deal with war-induced traumas, re-interrogating the war and its spiritual ramifications for survivors. ›Ahangar paints a decidedly different picture of the war than the official state iconography‹ (p. 169). Viktor Ullmann explores in a sophisticated way the challenge posed by Ahangar’s transgressions – especially in two of his later films, Malakeh/The Queen (2012) and Sarv Zīr-e Āb/Cypress Under Water (2018) – to the genre’s discursive boundaries, and that precisely through the production of ghost- and counter-memories.