Her lens on Iran | Mahnaz Mohammadi and Sreemoyee Singh on filming hope in dark times

On March 1, a time aft quality broke astir Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s assassination, New York-based exiled Iranian-American journalist, activistic and writer Masih Alinejad, 49, was 1 of the loudest jubilant voices. She posted an affectional video connected X: “Every morning, I aftermath up speechmaking that my radical are being killed by Ali Khamenei. But this is the archetypal greeting successful my beingness that I get the bully news. I wanna tally and outcry retired of joyousness Ali Khamenei is dead! Free Iran!”

The warfare escalated connected February 28 with U.S.-Israel airstrikes connected Iran to antagonistic Tehran’s “alleged” atomic influence. The struggle follows years of tension.

Alinejad near Iran successful 2009 to flight imprisonment. Years later, the representation of her with escaped achromatic hairsbreadth became the look of her 2014 online campaign, ‘My Stealthy Freedom’, inspiring Iranian women to obstruction against compulsory hijab. That led to the run ‘White Wednesdays’, wherever women dressed successful white, took to the streets, taking disconnected their headscarves, successful the look of maltreatment oregon arrest. “My rule is simple, I americium for women’s close to choose,” she told maine successful 2018, astir the merchandise of her memoir, The Wind successful My Hair: My Fight for Freedom successful Modern Iran (Hachette), her archetypal publication successful English, aft 4 books successful Persian.

Art, nary substance the mean (books, music, cinema), often is political. Alinejad’s words, hair, and initiatives, for instance, besides spawned #GirlsofRevolutionStreet protestation and #MyCameraIsMyWeapon campaign, wherever women filmed and posted online their altercations with the morality police. So, this year, astatine the 76th Berlinale, erstwhile planetary assemblage president Wim Wenders said cinema “is the counterweight of politics… we person to bash the enactment of people, not the enactment of politicians” successful effect to Gaza, it made headlines.

Political frame

For Iranian cinema, authorities has ever been its subtext. We talk to 2 filmmakers who bespeak connected jin, jiyan, azadi (woman, life, freedom) successful Iran done their cinema. Iranian filmmaker Mahnaz Mohammadi, 51, lives and films there, portion Indian documentary filmmaker Sreemoyee Singh, 36, went to Iran to survey Persian and marque a film. Both their films premiered astatine the Berlinale — Mohammadi’s Roya successful 2026, and Singh’s Be Kucheye Khoshbakht (And, Towards Happy Alleys) successful 2023, successful the Panorama segment. “Everything is political; the information that we are breathing and surviving successful our narration to society, that itself is political,” says Singh. Mohammadi, connected the different hand, is wide she is not making governmental films. “Sometimes misunderstanding oregon misconception volition happen. I tin archer you, I’m not making governmental films. But the concern that the radical are surviving in, I can’t disregard it. In Iran, the enactment of going retired connected the thoroughfare aft 6 p.m. six o’clock has go portion of activism, due to the fact that everyplace truthful galore radical are being arrested, killed. How tin I disagreement it betwixt this and that? I don’t privation to marque a movie astir that, but I privation to marque a movie astir what happens aft those authorities suppress the people.”

In Conversation with Mahnaz Mohammadi

Mahnaz Mohammadi: ‘Resistance is not opposing a force, but refusing to disappear’

Mohammadi made quality successful India successful 2022 during the International Film Festival of Kerala. She was to person the Spirit of Cinema Award the aforesaid twelvemonth Hungarian manager Béla Tarr was fixed the Lifetime Achievement Award. She was looking guardant to gathering Tarr, but her visa was denied. Mohammadi sent a fastener of her hairsbreadth successful her stead. “Cut hairsbreadth is the awesome of the calamity that we look each time and each moment,” she had said successful interviews then.

Weeks earlier the U.S.-Israeli assassination of Khamenei, erstwhile I conscionable her astatine the 76th Berlinale, astatine the satellite premiere of her sophomore diagnostic Roya, she allows maine to grounds her connected camera — due to the fact that she loves Indians. An Indian person had erstwhile talented her a clock, the clip connected which she didn’t change. Now, that frozen clip acts similar a bully memory. For Mohammadi, beingness has been a bid of fragments that flits betwixt representation and forgetting, the conscious and unconscious, imagination and reality, past and present. That is besides however the non-linear Roya is structured. Shot clandestinely, and featuring Turkish histrion Melisa Sözen (known for Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Winter Sleep, 2014), it reveals however isolation tin reshape perception, identity, and the fragile anticipation of resistance.

Roya, which successful Persian means dream, is the communicative of an Iranian teacher who is imprisoned successful Tehran’s Evin Prison for her governmental beliefs and is faced with a choice: to either marque a forced televised confession oregon stay confined to her 3 sq.m. cell. The movie channels Mohammadi’s ain clip successful prison.

‘When I becomes we’

Her progressive engagement successful ‘Campaign for Equality’ successful 2006, to request changes to discriminatory laws against Iranian women, enactment her successful the enactment of fire. The Islamic Regime arrested her aggregate times: successful 2007, 2009 (when she wrote an unfastened missive during post-election unrest), 2011, and successful 2014 (when she spent 5 years successful Evin Prison). She has besides been banned by Iran from making films — aft her debut diagnostic Son-Mother (2019) — due to the fact that of her agelong past of activism and socially captious filmmaking. “I’m a woman, I’m a filmmaker, I’m guilty. But present it’s not ‘I’, it’s ‘we’,” says Mohammadi. Her profoundly humanistic films absorption connected lived experiences nether repression, giving dependable to those silenced by the system. “Resistance is not opposing a force, but refusing to disappear,” she says, “In childhood, I utilized to think, ‘Where is hope? Maybe erstwhile I’m grown-up, I volition spell and get that hope’. But done beingness I’ve learnt it is not similar that; it is the mode of your surviving and practising. With cinema, you’re making hope.” Days earlier the bombings, Mohammadi spoke of the occidental world’s hypocrisy and soundlessness of the Leftists connected Iran. “So galore countries didn’t spot our pain. We conscionable became portion of the Islamic Republic’s property. In 2009, I wrote [about] this, but who listened? Nobody. People wrong Iran are warring for survival. And, inactive I person hope,” she says. “After the [January] massacre [that killed astir 30,000 Iranians], I deliberation the radical got much information for change. What I heard is that they didn’t judge the Islamic Republic could spot the Persian New Year. Just ideate however hopeful they were — due to the fact that for them, the regime’s sidesplitting of their children would end. It volition beryllium over.” In retrospect, her words dependable prophetic.

Sreemoyee Singh: ‘Resisting each time and pushing the boundaries, each Iranian has done that’

The Kolkata filmmaker’s insightful documentary Be Kucheye Khoshbakht is simply a emotion missive to Iranian cinema, poesy and culture. Shot wholly successful Iran implicit six years (till 2019), successful Farsi, this question diary is replete with intimate conversations with section filmmakers specified arsenic Jafar Panahi, actors, scholars, activists and mundane women — to uncover however creativity and absorption flourish nether censorship and societal repression.

A tragicomic country spells retired the irony. Every clip a filmmaker tries to speech astir censorship, well-timed operation sound drowns it out. In different scene, Singh sings successful Farsi on with a shopkeeper, Panahi by her side. (Singing successful nationalist volition onshore you successful jailhouse successful Iran.) Singh’s movie besides captures women watching and cheering connected a shot match. In 2018, women were allowed to ticker the Fifa World Cup successful Tehran. They could sing and rejoice with men astatine the stadium — an objection to the norm.

The documentary has travelled astir the satellite to much than 50 festivals, and recovered an code connected Mubi successful India and Criterion successful the U.S. Singh is conscionable backmost from the film’s screening astatine Bengaluru’s Christ University, among others.

The filmmaker, who prefers to usage the connection “resistance” alternatively of “activism”, says, “Resisting each time and pushing the boundaries of what is not allowed, each Iranian has done that.” She shares an incidental from her clip successful Iran, erstwhile she was travelling successful a autobus with her friend, a vocal rebel against the government. “I was precise cautious astir my scarf, but hers would autumn disconnected each the time. I’d archer her, ‘Do you not privation to beryllium careful? What if you’re picked up by the cops?’ And she said, ‘All Iranian women person been picked up by the cops for not wearing the hijab properly. They’ll grind you for five-six hours, sometimes for 24 hours, but past you’ll beryllium fto spell of. It’s a portion of living.’ I recovered that achy to hear.”

Singh adds, “After the Mahsa Amini lawsuit [the 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian was killed successful constabulary custody successful 2022], you volition spot that cipher truly wears the veil connected the street. Over the years, women person pushed the boundaries of the instrumentality connected compulsory hijab and the state’s thought of modesty.”

‘People are hurt, angry, shocked’

After the caller bombings, Singh has heard backmost from lone 1 person successful Iran. “This is the longest I haven’t been successful interaction with them,” she tells maine implicit the phone. “Nothing is going through. VPNs are not working; messages person azygous ticks.” She mentions gathering a young Iranian filmmaker successful Kolkata. Mohammadreza Azadi, 36, came to India conscionable earlier the bombings to be DocedgeKolkata, an planetary incubation and pitching lawsuit for documentary projects. The past speech helium had with his household was that they were evacuating Tehran due to the fact that of the continued bombings. “The concern is akin to past year, erstwhile Israel archetypal bombed Iran,” Singh translates Azadi’s words for me. “Everything is closed. A batch of radical person evacuated and moved to smaller cities. Many important buildings person been damaged by the bombs; they are destroying Tehran.”

Singh adds, “The non-stop bombings are not targeted. We cognize astir the schoolhouse [the girls’ schoolhouse that was bombed connected February 28, sidesplitting implicit 160 people], but determination is besides the Gandhi Hospital, wherever determination were patients, children, and babies successful incubators. And the Golestan Palace, it’s destroyed.”

A homesick Azadi yearns to return, but the airspace is closed. “People are hurt, angry, shocked and restless. A batch of them are against this attack. We person seen what America’s onslaught connected Iraq and Afghanistan did. The radical of Iran cognize that these attacks volition not bring happier days,” helium concludes.

tanushree.ghosh@thehindu.co.in