Iranian audiences will have the chance to watch a film about the Holocaust next week thanks to an initiative by a French anti-racism group.

Education about the Nazi atrocities is minimal at best in a country whose president has publicly denied the Holocaust, but from Monday Claude Lanzmann’s 1985 documentary Shoah will be screened on an Iranian satellite channel.

The film, a nine-hour work which includes survivor testimony, has been dubbed from the original French into Farsi.

The plan is a brainwave of the Aladdin Project, which was set up in Paris two years ago to improve Holocaust education and challenge racism and Islamophobia.

Last month the group took more than 150 Christian, Muslim and Jewish dignitaries from around the world on a visit to Auschwitz in honour international Holocaust Memorial Day.

The Iranian government has not offered support for the screening and satellite dishes are banned in the country, although this is not usually enforced.

Abe Radkin, executive director of the Aladdin Project, called on the Iranian government to support the film and said he wanted to show it in Egypt as well.

But he said: "We will wait a bit so that the political situation in Arab countries allows the broadcast of such a film.

"We need a peaceful atmosphere to concentrate on this message."