‘I’m a soldier. I don’t have a gun, but I have a pen and a camera’: Mahnaz Mohammadi on fighting the Iranian regime
The director and activist on her fictional drama Roya, drawing on her experience of imprisonment and torture, and why even in Europe she feels unsafe
TL;DR
- Mahnaz Mohammadi is an Iranian film-maker and women's rights activist with a history of arrests and imprisonment.
- Her new film, Roya, is a fictional drama inspired by her own and others' experiences of prison, including solitary confinement and torture.
- Mohammadi left Iran and is currently living in Europe on a visa, but still feels unsafe due to her activism.
- She views her work as a form of resistance, comparing her camera and pen to weapons.
- The film Roya was partially shot in Iran without official permission and in Tbilisi, Georgia.
- Mohammadi believes the current Iranian regime is nearing its end and that the new generation is determined to overthrow it.
- She draws inspiration from her father's support and her own early taste of independence through work as a teenager.
- Other Iranian directors like Jafar Panahi and Mohammad Rasoulof have also faced persecution from the regime.
- Mohammadi is working on a documentary with Channel 4 about women in Iran.