In Iran, Women Break Boundaries in Movies – The Wall Street Journal

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The movies show that “our laws are that of a patriarchy but our society is a matriarchy,” says Abolzfazl Jalili, a veteran Iran-based director. Mr. Jalili curated the festival with the Franco-Iranian Center, a non-governmental organization that fosters ties between Iran and France. The goal was to highlight Iranian talents who aren’t known on the international circuit. Vitré, a medieval town in Brittany that aims to become a hub for cultural events, hosted the festival. Organizers estimated 1,500 attended and said they hope to repeat the event next December.

While men also are testing the limits of Iran’s censorship, women are increasingly taking charge as directors, actors and characters. Since 2006, the majority of college graduates in Iran have been women, a development reflected in the heavily censored film industry.

“Movies are supposed to show what happens in society,” said Asal Bagheri, a Paris-based expert on Iranian cinema. “The Iranian reality is that women are getting more emancipated, which includes having more and more female movie makers.”

Iran’s filmmakers have a powerful role model in Forough Farrokhzad, who directed the classic 1963 documentary, “The House is Black.” Her humanistic portrayal of leprosy patients blended Persian poetry and minimalist aesthetics. Ms. Farrokhzad’s documentary helped spark a New Wave among Iran’s filmmakers that could have been cut short when the Islamic revolution took hold in 1979. But the regime’s founder, Ayatollah

Ruhollah Khomeini,

saw the social realism of Iranian cinema as a tool to promote the new regime, Ms. Bagheri said.

Most foreign movies are banned from cinemas in Iran, but home-grown films can travel to festivals in other countries. Under the Islamic Republic’s censorship laws, women must wear veils on screen, even in domestic scenes where in real life their heads wouldn’t be covered.

That’s the case in a film screened at Vitré: “A House on 41st Street,” directed by Hamid Reza Ghorbani. However, Mr. Ghorbani flouts other social norms with his daring take on the Talion, a cornerstone of Islamic jurisprudence that allows the families of victims to determine retribution. In his 2016 film, which is based on a true story, the only male character is utterly powerless. The dominant character is a matriarch whose son killed his brother, forcing a choice between one daughter-in-law who wants her husband to remain alive and another seeking justice.

While a new generation of filmmakers and actors is pushing boundaries in Iran, others have been prohibited from working or have sought exile. Mohsen Makhmalbaf, a high-profile director and a 2001 winner at Cannes, now lives in London. He left Iran in 2005, after hardline president

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

was elected.

A decade ago, Jafar Panahi, the Golden Lion winner at the 2000 Venice Film Festival, was arrested and temporarily detained on allegations he tried to document the unrest after Mr. Ahmadinejad’s disputed re-election in 2009. Mr. Panahi still lives in Iran, where he has been banned from working but is directing movies clandestinely.

Last month, 200 Iranian movie-industry figures signed a letter condemning state censorship after director and 2017 Cannes winner Mohammad Rasoulof received a one-year prison sentence for a movie the authorities deemed unacceptable. Also in November, prominent filmmakers and other artists denounced a crackdown on protesters across Iran who demonstrated against fuel-price increases.

One film screened at the Vitré festival, “Yeva,” had a limited release in the U.S. during the fall. Two other films, “Villa Dwellers” and “Mothering,” can be streamed by viewers outside Iran around the world through the website IMVBox, which has representatives in London, Los Angeles and Tehran. The online distribution platform, which offers more than 1,500 movies, was established in September 2013 by Iranian and non-Iranian supporters to bolster the Iranian movie industry. It is free for Farsi-language movies but charges a $5.99 monthly subscription fee for English subtitles.

In Vitré, women directors screened works with edgy subjects, plot twists and strong female characters. Three movies to note:

‘Mothering’
Director: Roqiyeh Tavakoli

Ms. Tavakoli focuses on the female characters around a dispossessed man trying to reconnect with his wife. Men play peripheral roles, such as a cheating boyfriend who never appears on screen and ends up being rejected. What initially appears to be a run-of-the-mill drama is fraught with complex twists, unexpected family ties and secrets. While most Iranian movies are set in the capital, Tehran, Ms. Tavakoli’s “Mothering” takes place in Yazd, a traditional city in the desert that the director hails from.

‘Villa Dwellers’

Director: Monir Gheydi

It took Ms. Gheydi a decade to get the censors’ greenlight for her first movie: a portrait of life in a secret compound of officers’ wives near the front line during Iran’s war with Iraq in the 1980s. The conflict is shown from the point of view of a woman trying to flee abroad with her children. The Iranian government tried to control the narrative of the war, sending ideologically trained units to document the conflict and produce movies glorifying its fighters. Ms. Gheydi broke with four decades of convention in portraying the conflict. The Iranian authorities long refused to give approval because “they were worried it would be anti-war movie,” she told the audience in Vitré.

‘Yeva’
Director: Anahid Abad

Ms. Abad’s heroine, a doctor on the run after her husband’s suspicious death, desperately tries to save a child critically injured by a mine. “I had an Iranian audience in mind,” Ms Abad said, when making her movie, which was partly funded by the Iranian government. The director is a Tehran native and a member of Iran’s Armenian community. Although “Yeva” was released in theaters in the Islamic Republic, female characters don’t wear veils because the film is set in an ethnic Armenian territory, the Republic of Artsakh. Ms Abad says she is ready to go further next time. “A movie [in Iran] starring women without veils?” she says. “One day, I will do it!”