One of the most moving and politically urgent films in this year’s Berlinale program is the Iranian shot film Memories of a window by Mehraneh Salimian and Amin Pakparvar. The film documents the Women, Life, Freedom protest in Iran in 2022 and the brutal oppression of the Iranian regime. At the same time, it is a poetic and deeply beautiful call to fight for your rights.
I was eager to get to know the filmmakers behind this remarkable documentary. Since they couldn’t make it to Berlin, we met online and I am very happy to be to share our conversation here.
Amin Pakparvar and Mehraneh Salimian are both from Iran where they studied at Tehran University of Art. In 2023 they moved to Chicago to study at the Art Institute of Chicago. As Mehraneh explains they are partners in crime, in life, and in work. In their films they focus on archives, Iranian women’s stories, protest movements and Iranian contemporary history.
First of all, I wanted to say how touched and impressed I was by your film. I saw all of the short films in the generation 14+ section and I’m getting really angry if you’re not winning. Could you please talk about how this film came to be?
Amin:
Thank you! Well, the approach that we follow in our movies is called autoethnography. It is a kind of documentary filmmaking and writing, in which the filmmakers and writers try to reflect on their personal situation in order to share a collective historical, political, social story. So instead of having a camera that is documenting a subject matter or another person, filmmakers turn the camera toward themselves.
Mehraneh:
And in this film we are sharing our own story within the context of Iranian protest, to show the wider, collective story of young people in Iran who were trying to oppose the tyrannical factors in the political situation in 2022. We asked ourselves: How can people protest from behind windows when the suppression on the streets heightens?
One thing that really impressed me about the film was the poetic language you use both in pictures and text. It adds such a strong contrast to the violence that is seen on screen. I felt very touched by that. Would you say that you try to answer the violence and oppression that you have met with some kind of softness?
Amin:
Yes, you know, although the outside picture of these movements, these protests are terribly, awfully violent, the people who are actually there on the streets are some young, mostly innocent people who are humanly looking for their freedom. So although the outside, the image, is violent, within it there is something very human, very innocent going on. So the language we use is softer than the image, because we are reflecting people’s dreams.
Mehraneh:
I don’t know why, but when you asked this question, I got reminded of this quote that I read somewhere, saying that when you’re talking about darkness, you have to be careful not to become part of that. So if we show all this violent images, violence footage, and if we would add another layer of violence to it by our language, I think we would risk becoming part of that violence and we wanted to avoid that.
I really feel it’s also a big topic when you’re making films about war. I have many Ukrainian friends who are filmmakers. They talk about this weird human desire of wanting to see the destroyment, brutality and the pain of the war on the screen, and that you need to find a different way to portray the war.
A:
Exactly, that’s very difficult and problematic. I see many examples of that. Filmmakers who satisfy the desire of some audience for destroyment, especially in narrative filmmaking.
You were talking about the footage you used in the film. How did you find it and how did you choose which material to use?
M:
We knew that we wanted to make a film about the Woman, Life, Freedom movement that happened in Iran, because we were part of that. We were living in Tehran when that movement erupted. We already had some footage, but when we came to Chicago we watched a lot of archives. I can say that we watched all the footage that was shared anonymously online by the protesters.
A:
And you’re talking about hundreds and even thousands of videos, almost 2,000 videos.
M:
Yeah, so we started organizing and labeling them, by their content, and we gradually understood that there are some videos that are shot in the streets, but over time, when the crackdown intensifies, there is more and more footage that is shot from behind windows, because people got afraid to go to the streets. They were pushed back, behind their windows. And that was a click moment for us. And we had this image of an alternative movement from behind windows and were asking ourselves this question: Can a revolution emerge from behind a window?
Could you talk about the current situation of young people in Iran? What has changed since you made this film and what are young people experiencing right now?
M:
You know, before 2022 there were a lot of social and political rules that prevented women from choosing what they want to wear. But after the murder of Mahsa Amini (a young Kurdish woman who was arrested by the morality police for not wearing her hijab properly) women understood that this rule, this commandment, is actually something that people are being killed for. They understood that it is within their power to impose what they want onto the government policy. Now in big cities you see a lot of women wearing what they want.
A:
But although this issue has been kind of resolved, there are other issues, like freedom of speech and economic situation that has gotten worse and worse and worse.
And right now, if you see millions of people on the street being suppressed again, it’s because they are fed up with the government and that they don’t hear their voices, their desire for better welfare, better economic situation, better environment.
People have come to an understanding that it is the whole government that is the main reason behind all of these political catastrophes.
And after the current protests in January, where thousands of people were killed, do people still have the power to continue fighting?
M:
On January 8th and 9th millions of people gathered in the streets and protested against the dictatorship. But they were met with a massacre. Thousands and thousands of them were killed. The exact number is unknown to us, some people guess that it has been more than 30,000 – it never ends. It’s been over a month, and when you open social media or Instagram more and more people share that their loved ones were killed.
It varies, I would say, but when we talk to people, some of them are very hopeful that big change is coming. That the revolution we are talking about in the film is about to happen. Some of them are more pessimistic about the whole situation.
A:
There’s a lot of anxiety within the country right now. You see a lot of disappointed people. They feel like they did what they could do, but were met with violence.
And how does it feel for you to be so far away from Iran when this is happening?
A:
It feels terrible. We are paralyzed sometimes. We’re hoping for changes, and you see that the government is doing the same crime against humanity, even harsher and harsher.
M:
We are far away from Iran and we were in the dark for two weeks, because the internet was shot down. We had no idea how our families were doing, if our friends were killed or not.
A:
Right now, you see a lot of voices from within Iran, who are calling Iranian diaspora, saying that it’s upon to you to share our voices, we are being suppressed by internet blockade, by the lack of freedom of speech, by violence. They are calling the people, their loved ones in Europe, in America, in Australia, saying: go out to the streets, protest for us.
Is that also be the plea, that you would send to people in Europe?
A:
Exactly. I see a lot of posts and on social media from people within the country, saying demonstrate on behalf of us! Protest against the governing regime in Iran so they can’t silence us. So we are also feeling this responsibility on our shoulders to be the voice of our people.
At the end of our conversation Mehraneh, Amin and I feel like we could continue talking for much longer. I very much hope they will be honored at Friday’s award ceremony and am looking forward to meet them at the Berlinale with a future film someday. Until then we will have to continue protesting – on the streets and behind the windows!
