I am a soldier. I don’t have a weapon, but I have a pen and a camera’: Mahnaz Mohammadi talks about fighting the Iranian regime | film

MAhnaz Mohammadi is a survivor. The Iranian director and women’s rights activist has been arrested on numerous occasions and imprisoned several times. In 2011, she was held for several months in solitary confinement and tortured. In 2014, she was sentenced to five years in prison and spent several months in prison. A few years ago, she met one of her first interrogators after her early arrest.

“Do you know what he told me?” She says. “He said he told his colleagues that after doing all these things, if I go back behind the camera, it means they won’t be able to do anything with me. And when I heard that from his mouth, I thought: ‘He’s right!’ “No one can hurt me.”

However, Mohammadi is still constantly looking over her shoulder. She left Iran to finish her latest film and is residing in Europe on a three-year visa. Recently, a journalist revealed about the city she lives in: “I thought I should move now. I’m not afraid of death but I don’t feel safe. It’s not a good feeling.”

We met at her friend’s house on a leafy street in London. Mohammadi, 51, is visiting the country to screen two new films. She has a nice style. Her voice barely rose above a whisper at times. But her gaze was steady: “You can ask me anything.”

For many years, she wanted to make a film about prison, but hesitated. This is partly due to the reaction when she spoke about her experiences. Sometimes, people didn’t want to hear it. There were friends who rolled their eyes. “They’ll say, ‘Do you want to take credit for being in prison?’ I was telling them: You have no idea what happened there. It made her even more isolated. “I thought maybe I’d be quiet.”

Now, she has written and directed the extraordinary fantasy drama “Ruya” – drawing on her own and others’ experiences in prison. It’s a terrible watch, but it’s not graphic. “I watched a lot,” she says. The film tells the story of university professor Roya, played by Melissa Sozen, who is Turkish (“I don’t want an Iranian to put his life in danger just for a movie,” Mohammadi says). Roya is accused of inciting her students to burn their hijab. Like Mohammadi in 2011, she was held for months in solitary confinement in a small, windowless cell in the notorious Evin Prison and subjected to torture. The light flashes constantly. It is impossible to know whether it is day or night.

It is an unsettling, experimental film that unfolds with the logic of a nightmare. For the first 20 minutes or so, the entire film is shot from Revelation’s point of view. When a guard takes her from her cell for interrogation, the audience is under a chador that covers her completely with a vision – partially blindfolded, she can barely see more than her feet as she is manhandled along the corridor. The details are terrifying. A hint of blood smeared on the elevator buttons; A prisoner begs the guards to bring her newborn baby to breastfeed. The sound design is a hit. I watched the parts with my hands over my ears. The whole time, Roya did not utter a single word.

In the second part of the film, she is free, released for three days on compassionate leave. Or at least that’s what it seems at first glance. But after months of torture and solitary confinement, it is difficult to know what is real. Like a vision, we can’t be sure of anything.

The film begins with a vision reading graffiti on the walls of her prison cell, and tracing it with her finger. These details are autobiographical: “They helped me get through isolation,” she says. “Then one day, I stole a pen from my detective and started writing to the next woman—”I was here. Now I’m not. It won’t stay forever. I’m gone. You will go. Don’t worry“Some time after her release, she met a woman imprisoned in the same cell as her. “She came to me and said, ‘Mehnaz, you saved my life!’

Mohammadi talks about her weaknesses in prison. During one interrogation, she was informed of her father’s death. He was told she was dead, and he was arrested. “They tortured us at the same time,” she whispered, her eyes filling with tears. “I felt so guilty. I was thinking I should kill myself. Because if I get out, how can I look into my family’s eyes?”

In what ways did prison change her? “I am not the same person. Mahnaz, who went to prison, was a different person. When she came out, my identity was shattered.” After her release, she spent nearly two years at home, barely seeing anyone, supported by a few friends – “mostly women. I used to cook for them. I’m a good cook.” She explains that prison destroyed her confidence. During interrogation, Mohammadi learned that some of her friends and colleagues had reported on her; The recordings were played.

Mohammadi has been banned from making films since her 2019 feature film debut, Son-Mother, and she’s not the only Iranian director risking everything to continue working. Earlier this month, the Revolutionary Court in Tehran upheld a one-year prison sentence for Oscar nominee Jaafar Panahi on charges of creating propaganda against the Iranian state. Muhammad Rasoulof fled to Germany in 2024 after being sentenced to eight years in prison and flogging for directing his film “The Sacred Fig Seed.”

Mohammadi defied the regime to direct the film Roya, filming exterior scenes in Iran without official permission. She prefers not to discuss how she works, fearing that it would put her colleagues in Iran at risk of arrest. The prison scenes were filmed in Tbilisi, Georgia. She is used to working under restrictions, fighting for everything: “I never think about restrictions. As a woman, from the time I was born, they put a scarf on your hair. They don’t just put a scarf on our heads. They put restrictions on the way we think. That’s why I never think about restrictions and censorship. I only think about what I can do.”

Does it seem scandalous, making a film as personal as Revelation? “You feel naked,” she says. “But there are a lot of people inside Iran who are still in prison. Until the last prisoner gets there, I will do everything I can. I can’t do big things. But I can do small things, like making films.” She recently directed a shocking documentary, Beyond the Lies, about the regime’s violent suppression of the November 2019 protests. Her current project is a documentary with Channel 4 about women in Iran.

Al-Mohammadi grew up in an educated, middle-class home. Both sides of her family are teachers and university professors. His uncle is a poet. “Books have been my best friends since childhood,” she says.

Her father, a businessman, played a big role in her life. When she was released from prison for the first time, he welcomed her home with open arms. “Mehnaz is amazing,” he told me. You are truly my daughter now.” I was lucky to have such a father, because some people after prison are rejected by their families. If I survive, it is because I was lucky to have such a father.

She tasted independence early. At the age of 15, Mohammadi won a story competition on children’s radio and got a job. For four years, she wrote for the program, and went to the radio station every morning before school. They even suggested that she try to become a reporter, but that would require wearing a chador. I politely declined.

Working as a teenager changed her life. “You can’t imagine the trust you gave me,” she says. With the money she saved, when she was eighteen years old, she moved to live alone in Tehran. Everyone was so shocked. “You have a family!” Why do you live alone?”

At university, I studied psychology, then found a job at a film company. Did she always want to direct? “No. I wanted to write books, not scripts.” Then, one Persian New Year’s Day, I volunteered at a homeless women’s shelter with some friends. She continued to visit and eventually directed her first documentary, Women Without Shadows, about the shelter, which was filmed in five days and released in 2003.

Now, after all, does she see her future in Iran? “Yes. I will return. I am not a refugee in Europe. My visa is for three years.” But I can point out that she can ask for asylum. “Yes. But I’m not just a filmmaker. I’ve been fighting for women’s rights for many years.”

She continues: “My mother asks me: ‘Mahnaz, why can’t I see you? I tell her: Mom, just imagine that I am a soldier, but I have no weapon; I have a pen and I have a camera.

Is she optimistic about the future in Iran and the overthrow of the regime? Al-Muhammadi nodded. “A few days ago I heard from one of my students. She said: ‘Don’t worry, Mahnaz. We are gaining strength for the final attack on them. Now is our time. “And we will do it. The new generation has a great will to get rid of them. It will definitely happen. The Islamic Republic is over.”