One Image, Two Acts unravels the multicultural and interconnected systems of petroleum infrastructures distributed and accumulated across unlikely geographies and material temporalities. Examining the photographic and film archives of British Petroleum (BP) during its operations in Iran, Iraq, and Kuwait, this film traces the visual and media infrastructures through which oil has historically operated as an agent of power in the colonial episteme. It describes BP's role in the construction of cinemas in the oil towns of southwest Iran and follows the transformation of this emerging image economy in the contours of the nationalization movement and colonial cinema between 1950 and 1980 in Iran.