My Stolen Planet (Sayyareye dozdide shodeye man), 2024

Director: Farahnaz Sharifi

Farahnaz Sharifi, the director of this film, was born three weeks after the Islamic Revolution in Iran. On the day of her birth, many Iranian women protested in the streets against the imposed obligation to wear hijab, as if she was already destined by birth to be a part of the fight for women’s freedom. An ongoing fight. She talks about it in diary form, being the narrator from both “her” and “their” planet. On her planet people dance, sing, rejoice, socialise, gather in their homes, drink alcohol, don’t wear hijab, laugh and have fun. Here you are allowed to be all that you are, and all that you want to be. On their planet people are killed, children are taught in schools to wish for others to die, and women and even little girls are covered to be easily controlled. Growing up, she quickly began to realise that the warmth of her home is not the same planet as the streets. She began to work on preserving, enriching and building her planet with all available means. This dualism will mark her life – as well as her fight for human rights, especially women’s rights.

There are very few film records from this time as she was born before mobile phones, when there were only analogue cameras and eight-millimetre video cameras. She had a special interest in family films, she was finding, buying and archiving them. Song, dance, and even a woman’s voice became a crime in Iran. She builds and decorates her planet, creating a safe place to escape from the harsh reality, using moments of happiness recorded in other people’s homes, people who commonly had to leave Iran. Her interest in film will lead her to enrol in a film school where she will begin to master the basics of filming. She records with other people’s cameras in the beginning, but after buying her first cell phone with a camera, she begins to record literally everything – from killing cockroaches in the apartment to dangerous, brutal situations on the streets. As she becomes skilled in filmmaking, Farahnaz digitises the collected archive and diligently scans every bit of film she can get her hands on. Searching for photos and film material is complicated because those who remained in Iran were forced to instantly forget their previous life. Fearing reprisals, they often destroyed photographs and films that could expose them to harassment. Seeing her mother’s forgetfulness caused by Alzheimer’s worsen, Farahnaz is never more determined to save her and other people’s memories worth preserving from oblivion.

Through story about her life and Iran in general, the director speaks about historical figures and events – about women who gave their lives by setting themselves on fire in protest against the obligatory hijab, about the women banned from football matches, about the downing of the Ukrainian plane that was transporting civilians to Canada, about shutting down the internet, banning American and British COVID vaccines because they are haram… On the other hand, it shows people, who had been killed, in a personal footage where they are singing and dancing, and some wonderful videos of medical staff cheering up the COVID patients by dancing, giving them strength and will to live. The most moving moments in the film are when the nurse, all wrapped up in a protective suit and mask, laughing loudly, humming and moving her rear, performs a dance for the dying patients.

The material is so wonderfully edited so the shaky old footage is repeated several times and spectators can perceive and remember it well, and the authenticity of the footage taken with cell phones is completely preserved to the point that you clearly feel the fear when the car from which the footage is being shot is hit, and when an unknown force knocked the phone out of hands of person filming the brutal attacks on the protesters.

Fortunately, or not, the director, documentarian, editor and writer, will attend an artistic residency in Germany in 2022, right at the time of the “Women, Life, Freedom” movement. There are protests again on the streets of Iranian cities, hijabs are being burned, her friends – documentary filmmakers are arrested, filming is life-threatening, her apartment is ransacked, her computer and archives are confiscated… And when you think it can’t be harder for her not to be in Iran, she finds out about her mother’s death through a video call. And then Farahnaz does what she loves and knows best, she goes out into the street with a camera. Large peaceful protests in support of the Iranian people in their fight for freedom are taking place in Berlin, the first peaceful demonstrations in her life where she moves without fear, shoots whatever she wants and does not risk getting killed while filming.

The film symbolically returns us to its beginning and to the photo of the director, similar to the beautiful shot of a little girl who is happily running down the street waving her hijab and exclaiming at the top of her voice: “Women! Life! Freedom!”

The circle does not close here, the struggle does not end here, just this year’s 19th edition of the Pravo Ljudski Film Festival ends here. And it ends with a tribute to all Iranian women who have advocated and continue to advocate for freedom, especially those who lost their lives in that fight.

Marinela Domančić