By means of AFP
PARIS: One guy mimes his bones being damaged, a lady recounts her give up to non secular brainwashing, and a 3rd guy replicates his confinement in a tiny jail cellular.
Along with his new documentary “The place God is Now not”, French-Iranian filmmaker Mehran Tamadon hopes that the testimonies of former detainees who say they have been tortured in Iran will “unsettle” a few of their persecutors.
All recount abuse that took place earlier than the protests that are actually shaking Iran, from the brutal repression of the Eighties within the fast aftermath of the revolution up till the decade.
Mehran Tamadon
However “the whole lot I’m filming speaks of lately,” stated the director who used to be born to communist oldsters in Iran in 1972, however fled to France together with his mom as a kid.
“Presently, there are other folks being tortured in jail in Iran.”
Iranian government have arrested 1000’s since national protests broke out following the September 16 demise in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini for allegedly breaching the rustic’s strict get dressed regulations for girls.
Safety forces have additionally killed 537 other folks all through the crackdown, Norway-based Iran Human Rights watchdog says.
“For 43 years,” because the 1979 revolution that put in an Islamic theocracy within the nation, Iran has been within the grips of a “totalitarian device”, stated Tamadon, an architect who grew to become to cinema within the first decade of the millennium when he lived in Tehran.
After 2009 documentary “Bassidji” (“Basij”) by which he interviewed contributors of the paramilitary volunteer drive, the atheist engaged in dialog with 4 clerics for his 2014 paintings “Iranian”.
The government have been so unsatisfied with him that they confiscated his passports.
Russian roulette
When they returned them to him in 2012, he made up our minds to depart Iran, the place he says violence has turn out to be so ingrained that, “like a Russian roulette”, it could possibly strike at any time.
In “The place God is Now not”, which premiered on the Berlinale in February, 50-year-old Mazyar welds a steel mattress body like the only he used to be tortured on after being detained for alleged spying and homicide.
It used to be there the as soon as trade supervisor used to be tied up, and his torturers broke the bones of his toes with a steel rod, he says.
When he used to be now not ready to stroll, he used to be dragged in entrance of a digicam to admit to crimes he had by no means dedicated.
Additionally within the movie, Homa, a Marxist lady who used to be detained in an overcrowded jail within the Eighties, breaks down in tears as she recounts being so blasted with unending spiritual chants that she awoke sooner or later brainwashed and began to wish.
Taghi Rahmani, a political activist who used to be locked up for 15 years for his perspectives, re-enacts his confinement in a tiny Parisian cellar.
“I spent six months like this,” he stated, counting out the 3 steps between the 2 partitions of a former cellular.
Rights teams have lengthy lambasted using torture in Iranian jails, with Amnesty Global in a September 2020 document detailing strategies together with beatings, floggings, electrical shocks, rigidity positions, mock executions, water-boarding and sexual violence.
The gang stated in March that within the crackdown at the protest motion kid protesters as younger as 12 have been being subjected to torture that incorporated electrical shocks and rape.
A torturer’s sense of right and wrong
In a 2d movie additionally due out this 12 months, “Mon Pire Ennemi” (“My Worst Enemy”), Tamadon asks award-winning Iranian-French actress Zar Amir Ebrahimi to step into the sneakers of her interrogators.
Changing into her sufferer, the filmmaker permits her to matter him to the similar humiliation she says she persisted by the hands of regime brokers after a intercourse tape that includes her and her boyfriend used to be leaked on-line in 2006.
In a single scene, she forces him to strip all the way down to his undies.
“I loved destroying you with the phrases I stated,” she says in opposition to the tip of the movie.
Tamadon says he hopes each works can be sufficient to make some contributors of the regime in Iran think again their movements.
“Most of the questions I ask my characters a couple of torturer’s sense of right and wrong are in reality immediately geared toward them,” he stated.
“Possibly this will likely plant a seed that can develop into one thing afterward.”
Rahmani, the political activist who has lived in France for over a decade, does no longer consider both “The place God is Now not” or “My Worst Enemy” can result in any redemption.
However the whole lot in them “is occurring these days in Iran. By means of talking up, I am looking to denounce it,” he stated.
His personal spouse, distinguished rights defender Narges Mohammadi, is jailed in Tehran’s Evin jail.
“As my spouse is widely recognized, she is not tortured bodily. However she’s in solitary confinement,” he stated.
“Every time she suffers, I additionally undergo.”
PARIS: One guy mimes his bones being damaged, a lady recounts her give up to non secular brainwashing, and a 3rd guy replicates his confinement in a tiny jail cellular.
Along with his new documentary “The place God is Now not”, French-Iranian filmmaker Mehran Tamadon hopes that the testimonies of former detainees who say they have been tortured in Iran will “unsettle” a few of their persecutors.
All recount abuse that took place earlier than the protests that are actually shaking Iran, from the brutal repression of the Eighties within the fast aftermath of the revolution up till the decade.googletag.cmd.push(serve as() googletag.show(‘div-gpt-ad-8052921-2’); );
Mehran TamadonBut “the whole lot I’m filming speaks of lately,” stated the director who used to be born to communist oldsters in Iran in 1972, however fled to France together with his mom as a kid.
“Presently, there are other folks being tortured in jail in Iran.”
Iranian government have arrested 1000’s since national protests broke out following the September 16 demise in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini for allegedly breaching the rustic’s strict get dressed regulations for girls.
Safety forces have additionally killed 537 other folks all through the crackdown, Norway-based Iran Human Rights watchdog says.
“For 43 years,” because the 1979 revolution that put in an Islamic theocracy within the nation, Iran has been within the grips of a “totalitarian device”, stated Tamadon, an architect who grew to become to cinema within the first decade of the millennium when he lived in Tehran.
After 2009 documentary “Bassidji” (“Basij”) by which he interviewed contributors of the paramilitary volunteer drive, the atheist engaged in dialog with 4 clerics for his 2014 paintings “Iranian”.
The government have been so unsatisfied with him that they confiscated his passports.
Russian roulette
When they returned them to him in 2012, he made up our minds to depart Iran, the place he says violence has turn out to be so ingrained that, “like a Russian roulette”, it could possibly strike at any time.
In “The place God is Now not”, which premiered on the Berlinale in February, 50-year-old Mazyar welds a steel mattress body like the only he used to be tortured on after being detained for alleged spying and homicide.
It used to be there the as soon as trade supervisor used to be tied up, and his torturers broke the bones of his toes with a steel rod, he says.
When he used to be now not ready to stroll, he used to be dragged in entrance of a digicam to admit to crimes he had by no means dedicated.
Additionally within the movie, Homa, a Marxist lady who used to be detained in an overcrowded jail within the Eighties, breaks down in tears as she recounts being so blasted with unending spiritual chants that she awoke sooner or later brainwashed and began to wish.
Taghi Rahmani, a political activist who used to be locked up for 15 years for his perspectives, re-enacts his confinement in a tiny Parisian cellar.
“I spent six months like this,” he stated, counting out the 3 steps between the 2 partitions of a former cellular.
Rights teams have lengthy lambasted using torture in Iranian jails, with Amnesty Global in a September 2020 document detailing strategies together with beatings, floggings, electrical shocks, rigidity positions, mock executions, water-boarding and sexual violence.
The gang stated in March that within the crackdown at the protest motion kid protesters as younger as 12 have been being subjected to torture that incorporated electrical shocks and rape.
A torturer’s sense of right and wrong
In a 2d movie additionally due out this 12 months, “Mon Pire Ennemi” (“My Worst Enemy”), Tamadon asks award-winning Iranian-French actress Zar Amir Ebrahimi to step into the sneakers of her interrogators.
Changing into her sufferer, the filmmaker permits her to matter him to the similar humiliation she says she persisted by the hands of regime brokers after a intercourse tape that includes her and her boyfriend used to be leaked on-line in 2006.
In a single scene, she forces him to strip all the way down to his undies.
“I loved destroying you with the phrases I stated,” she says in opposition to the tip of the movie.
Tamadon says he hopes each works can be sufficient to make some contributors of the regime in Iran think again their movements.
“Most of the questions I ask my characters a couple of torturer’s sense of right and wrong are in reality immediately geared toward them,” he stated.
“Possibly this will likely plant a seed that can develop into one thing afterward.”
Rahmani, the political activist who has lived in France for over a decade, does no longer consider both “The place God is Now not” or “My Worst Enemy” can result in any redemption.
However the whole lot in them “is occurring these days in Iran. By means of talking up, I am looking to denounce it,” he stated.
His personal spouse, distinguished rights defender Narges Mohammadi, is jailed in Tehran’s Evin jail.
“As my spouse is widely recognized, she is not tortured bodily. However she’s in solitary confinement,” he stated.
“Every time she suffers, I additionally undergo.”
