Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha, the directors of My Favorite Cake [“Mon gâteau préféré”], presented at the International Film Festival which opened on Thursday February 15, were unable to travel to the German capital to defend their feature film. They had already presented their previous film in Berlin, Forgiveness (2021), banned in Iran. “They can’t travel, they’re fine but they’re at home,” said Thursday during the opening ceremony the co-director of the Berlinale, Carlo Chatrian. “It reminds us that making films is not always easy, our hearts are with them.”
Celebrated in international festivals, Iranian cinema is at the same time subject to close control by the regime, and its greatest directors, who defy censorship, are regularly victims of repression. The Berlinale, known for its political commitments, has a long tradition of supporting dissident Iranian filmmakers. The festival awarded the Golden Bear to several of them like Asghar Farhadi (A separation), Jafar Panahi (Taxi) and Mohammad Rasoulof (The devil does not exist).
Confiscated passports
To these filmmakers in the crosshairs of the authorities are now added Maryam Moghaddam, 54 years old, and Behtash Sanaeeha, 43 years old, who were seen “confiscate their passports”, preventing them from traveling, and are “pursued by justice for their work as artists and filmmakers”, lamented the Berlinale. The police “raided our producer’s house and took away all the project’s hard drives and computers”, Behtash Sanaeeha testified to AFP by videoconference in a joint interview with Maryam Moghaddam. “Then, when we wanted to leave Tehran for Paris, to finish post-production, they took our passports from us at the airport,” he added.
However, the authorities were unable to prevent the film from being completed and screened in Berlin, where it is in the running for the Golden Bear. In this intimate drama, focused on economics, we follow the journey of Mahin, a 70-year-old widow, whose daughter has emigrated. Mahin passes the time by cooking for her group of friends, but has not forgotten the freedom of her youth, before the Islamic Republic. In a restaurant, she meets another retiree, a taxi driver. These lonely souls like each other and return home. Out of sight of the neighbors, they play records, dance, drink contraband wine. She seduces him, takes the lead. He lets himself do it.
“So many red lines” crossed in the film
The film “crosses so many red lines (on things) that have been banned in Iran for 45 years,” recognizes Maryam Moghaddam. “It’s the story of a woman who lives her life, who wants to have a normal life, which is forbidden for women in Iran.”
Especially since the actress, Lili Farhadpour, plays without a veil. “Showing a woman without a veil is forbidden. But most women, even religious women, do not wear the veil at home,” However, explains Maryam Moghaddam. “Drinking alcohol, dancing or meeting a partner, all this happens in Iran. But inside, behind the walls, because it’s forbidden outside. We wanted to be true to reality and show it .”
The film was in preparation during the vast protest movement which shook Iran after the death in September 2022 of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurd who died after being arrested for non-compliance with the country’s strict dress code. “We were depressed about what was happening in our country,” notes Behtash Sanaeeha. “The film is about women, life and freedom. So it was our duty to bring it to fruition.”
An Irish drama to open the festival
The Berlin film festival kicked off Thursday with the world premiere of an Irish drama starring actor Cillian Murphy, set against a flammable backdrop of war in the Middle East and Ukraine. “I think we’re here to see how artists respond to the world we live in right now. I’m curious to see what they do with it,” declared the president of the Berlinale jury, Mexican-Kenyan actress Lupita Nyong’o, during the opening press conference in Berlin. Lupita Nyong’o is the first black personality in the history of the Berlinale to chair the jury, responsible for deciding between the 20 films in competition for the Golden Bear, the festival’s highest award.
The Berlin event, which takes place from February 15 to 25, kicks off the three major European festivals, before Cannes in May and Venice in September. For its 74th edition, it presents an eclectic program with directors and actors from around the world, stars, political documentaries and arthouse cinema.
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Small Things Like These [“Ce genre de petites choses”, ndlr], starring Cillian Murphy, one of the favorites in this year’s Oscar race, is the first work presented among the 20 films in competition. Adapted from the best-seller by Irish author Claire Keegan, it is inspired by real facts about unmarried mothers exploited by Catholic sisters.
Directed by Belgian filmmaker Tim Mielants, Cillian Murphy plays a devoted father who discovers the secret of the Magdalen laundries: between the 1920s and 1990s, in convents, nuns kept young women in servitude after giving them up for adoption their babies, born out of wedlock.
A tense geopolitical climate for a committed festival
The festival, which has always been characterized by its political commitment, is particularly faced with tensions this year. During the jury’s press conference on Thursday February 15, Lupita Nyong’o and German director Christian Petzold were questioned by a journalist about their signing of an open letter last December calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. “I am always for peace and I advocate discussion, which we will hopefully do here,” replied the German director.
Asked about the decision of the festival management to cancel the invitation extended to elected officials from the far-right German party AfD to the opening ceremony, Christian Petzold replied that these “five types” didn’t matter. “There are hundreds of thousands of people (in Germany, editor’s note) who are demonstrating against them and they are much more important than these five people”, he said to applause. Just before the opening of the festival, around thirty people working in the artistic sector in Berlin held up signs with the message “no seats for fascists anywhere” (no seats for fascists, anywhere, editor’s note).
African cinema well represented
This year, the Berlinale is giving pride of place to cinema from the African continent, which Lupita Nyong’o welcomed. “I can’t wait to see these works and I will never be satisfied with seeing more,” did she say. So far, no African filmmaker has won the Golden Bear. Among the twenty works in the running for this supreme award, is notably Black Tea, a love story in the African community of Canton by Mauritanian director Abderrahmane Sissako and Dahomey by Franco-Senegalese Mati Diop, a documentary on the restitution of the royal treasures of Abomey in Benin, looted during the colonization of the country.
Also competing The Empire, whimsical remake of Star Wars by French director Bruno Dumont and Out of time by his compatriot Olivier Assayas, an autobiographical mise en abyme retracing the confinement of a director and his brother.