Looking for Loopholes : Iranian struggles

A man is leaning against a wall, behind him in a different room some men are stirring something in a large pan. In the background a Persian recitation accompanied by music can be heard. The man’s shoulders start to shake and he hides his face in his hands. When another man passes him, he briefly looks up, pretending to be just standing. Behind him the soup is stirred and beside him people listen to the music. He grieves for his dead son. Life goes on around him. This is just one of the many scenes in The Faces on the Wall by Costes and Anquetil that expose personal struggles. Struggles with the past, with emotions, with social status and against forgetting. The film centres on three martyrs and how they slowly slip away in time, despite heartfelt attempts from their family and former neighbourhood to keep their memory alive. Their faces are painted on walls, their names given to streets and their personal belongings put on display in glass closets, to give them back a little of their lost presence in the physical world.

Personal struggle is one thing that stands out in the wave of new documentary films coming from Iran. Small, compelling stories paint portraits of men and women who all want just a little space to live life in a way they feel comfortable with. They keep bumping into the barriers that society has built to keep them within the lines of its ideological framework. We see them having to find holes in the fence, not always succeeding to climb through - or when they do manage, discovering another enclosure behind the first one. Nevertheless, sometimes there is a little corner that escapes society’s watchful eye. With The Ladies’, director Mahnaz Afzali shows a public bathroom in a park in Tehran that has become a place for women from all backgrounds to take a moment to catch their breath. In the course of one day several stories float by, of survival in an outside world that demands resourcefulness and imagination. Just behind the two metal bathroom doors lie corruption, violence, injustice, rape and suicide, a world we never actually get to see in the film. Beneath the women’s vulnerability, strength sometimes shines through, if only just reflected in a smudgy mirror.

Another film that focuses on women’s restrictions is Our times by Rakhshan Bani-Etemad, a double portrait of young women trying to claim their places in the 2001 elections. The second half, about Bayat, is the one that sticks in the mind. Living almost like a pariah in a world that doesn’t accept single mothers, she has put herself forward as a presidential candidate even though she doesn’t stand a chance. She discloses, while sitting on a park bench after not getting a single vote, that just being in the elections has given her a voice, even if it was only for a moment. The fact that she was heard gave her the little respect she wanted so badly. Sometimes, being recognised is as important as achieving your goal. A struggle may seem endless but can turn out to be rewarding when small pieces are dealt with one at a time. This is proven by Zinat. Zinat, One special day by Ebrahim Mokhtari tells her story, first of taking off her ‘boregheh’ (a traditional mask worn by married women on the island of Queshm), then of becoming a healthcare worker, and finally getting elected for the city council.

A film that takes a completely different road, but which is also on a certain level about personal struggle is Tehran has no more pomegranates ! by director Massoud Bakhshi. Himself quite prominently present in image as well as in voiceover, he addresses the difficulty one encounters when putting together a film, and his confusion about trying to get a grip on his city’s blurry past and present. Many of the films from Iran are self-reflexive in that they deal with the boundaries of contemporary Iranian society as well as Iranian filmmaking. This makes Iranian cinema something to stand up and take notice of, as it provides an insight into the way these new visions are structured and moreover, gives a different perspective on a country that is usually perceived to be out of sight.

Maartje Alders