Taking pictures:
Iranian censorship is more interested in images than text. The country’s cinema is in demand at festivals and feature pages worldwide; Iranian literature plays no role. There were also the pictures of women taking off their headscarves that were posted everywhere with the slogan “Women! Life! Freedom!” Now the regime has banned the filmmakers Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha from traveling to the Berlinale, where their new film “My Favorite Cake” is scheduled to be shown in competition. Her film “Ballad of the White Cow” was also shown there in 2021, in which a widow fights to ensure that her innocently executed husband receives posthumous justice. In “My Favorite Cake” a woman in Tehran tries to live her own life. This is not desirable in a country in which the clerical regime still proclaims every form of oppression, exploitation and torture as “God’s will.”
In an interview with “nd” in 2021, Behtash Sanaeeha said that the Berlinale “pays more attention to films that take a critical look at the social or political situation in their countries. In this respect, the Berlinale is the most important festival in the world. His and his wife Maryam Moghaddam’s passports were confiscated in September when they wanted to travel to Paris to complete post-production of their new film. There was a raid on their home and footage was confiscated.
Iran has banned its artists from attending the Berlinale several times. In 2020, director Mohammed Rasulof was denied ID, in 2011 Jafar Panahi was not allowed to sit on the competition jury, but in 2015 he smuggled his underground film “Taxi Tehran” into the festival and won the Golden Bear. “Berlin, Berlin, we’re going to Berlin” – this call from German football fans is a political demand in Iran.
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