Massoud Bakhshi Director of "A Respectable Family"

How did your film come about? I first had an abstract image in my mind of a woman in a bathroom crying. Apart from this image that has persistently haunted me, I was also highly influenced by my childhood memories of the war that Iraq, backed by the US, imposed on Iran. Then I got to know about the Torino Film Lab and was lucky enough to be selected and to develop the whole project through them, that’s how I met my French producer.

Did the fact of working with foreign producers and institutions influence the content of your film? No I don’t think so, on the contrary, to work with people with different background, coming from different countries helped me a lot when working on the script. To discuss my story, with its own cultural specificities, with different people was an enriching process insofar as multiple perspectives converged in the improvement of my work.

Do you think there are preconceptions and prejudices towards Iranian cinema in the eyes of western audiences? Of course there are, and it’s really a pity. Our thoughts are manipulated daily by the media, it is really unfortunate because it prevents us from having an authentic picture of the country and its culture. I think it is only through the arts and culture that you can get to know other countries and different cultures. As a matter of fact cinema too, which after all is also a media, can feed prejudices and misconceptions.

How did the Iraq-Iran war change Iranian society? Every war has profound repercussions not only on the nation but also on the individuals. The Iraq-Iran war came at a peculiar time, right after the revolution when the western world sided with Saddam Hussein; it was obviously related to oil. Iran and Iraq were in fact the major producers of oil at the time in the region. So to have that war in my film is also of use for European audiences that know very little about it, but I also think that Iranian people don’t talk enough about it either.

by Giovanni Vimercati (Celluloid Liberation Front)