It’s a shocking documentary that was released in theaters in France, after being screened at the last Berlin Festival: Seven winters in Tehran reconstructs the tragic fate of Reyhaneh Jabarri, a young woman executed by hanging in 2014, and who has become a figure in the struggle of women in Iran.
Reyhaneh Jabbari was 19 when she was sexually assaulted by an Iranian notable. He tries to rape her, she grabs a knife from the table, stabs him and kills him. Arrested, thrown in prison, Reyhaneh is judged after a rigged investigation. Self-defense is not retained, the law of retaliation will be applied. For seven years, the family of the young woman moved heaven and earth and publicized her case, beyond Iranian borders. But on October 25, 2014, Reyhaneh Jabbari is executed.
German director Steffi Niederzoll hears about this case, emblematic of sexual discrimination in Iran, a few years later. ” My Iranian companion at the time made me meet members of Reyhaneh’s family, it was in 2016 in Istanbul, she remembers. We sympathize. And they ask me if I would be ready to make a film from images shot clandestinely and that they managed to get out of Iran. I asked myself a lot of questions: how could I, who am German, make a film about Iran? Especially since I don’t speak the language… »
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The meeting with Shole Pakravan, Reyhaneh’s mother, finally convinces her. This courageous mother tried everything to save her eldest daughter. A refugee in Germany with her two other children, she continues to keep the memory of the young woman alive. ” In 2007, it is as if a tsunami or an earthquake had ravaged my house. But little by little, I evolved spiritually and my family Also, Reyhaneh as well. Of course, I lost faith in my country, but learned other things about my society. It won’t bring Reyhaneh back to life. It took me a while to accept it. But I do know that she lived her life to the full as she intended. It’s fate, and now I have to fight for others. »
For this film, Steffi Niederzoll had access to family films, but also to stolen images taken with smartphones, and to the recording, also clandestine, of the voice of the young woman. And then to sequences shot illegally in Iran. ” We didn’t have any images of Rajai Shahr or Evin prisons, so we asked Iranian filmmakers to help us, explains the director. They took risks to shoot these sequences, it was dangerous, because the penalty incurred is at least five years in prison. But they wanted this film to be made, for Reyhaneh’s story to be told. I really encountered an unexpected wave of support in Iran. »
A vibrant manifesto against the death penalty, this documentary-truth resonates with all the more force as the Iranian people have risen up in recent months to cries of “woman, life, freedom “.