.png)
4 hours ago
2 ARTICLE AD
Juliette Binoche, Pedro Almodóvar and Mohammad Rasoulof have joined a campaign in support of persecuted Iranian filmmakers Maryam Moghadam and Behtash Sanaeeha.
The wife and husband directorial duo have been in the crosshairs of Iran‘s authoritarian Islamic Republic regime since 2023 over their feature film My Favourite Cake, which world premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in 2024.
The heartwarming story of love and loss revolves around 70-year-old widow, played by Lily Farhadpour, who reconnects with life’s small pleasures in the face of solitude, following her husband’s death.
The Iranian authorities are unhappy with the film because it flies in the face of their sexist, draconian laws around what women should wear and how they should act, with the protagonist seen without a hijab head covering, sharing a drink with a suitor and dancing.
The Islamic Republic government slapped a travel ban on Moghadam and Sanaeeha, preventing any travel for the last two years, including attending the Berlinale; subjected them to a gruelling investigation and has recently filed trumped up charges against the couple, who are set to appear in Iran’s Revolutionary Court on March 1.
This worrying development could result in the filmmakers being imprisoned in the country’s notoriously harsh Evin jail. At the same time, the couple have also been receiving anonymous death threats, in what is believed to be state-backed intimidation.
Actress Binoche as well as directors Almodóvar and Rasoulof, who fled his native Iran last year to escape a tough prison sentence for his work, are among 3,000 cinema professionals to have signed a petition, calling on the Islamic Republic authorities to immediately and unconditionally clear all the charges levelled at the couple.
The petition, which can he accessed here, reads: “After months of interrogation, and after continuous travel bans for the past two years, they [Moghadam and Sanaeeha] are now due to appear in Iran’s Revolutionary Court on March 1st, 2025 because of their Berlinale-awarded film My Favourite Cake, which has been labelled as “obscene”, as “offending public morality”, as “propaganda against the regime”, and as “unlawfully” screened without the authorities’ permits for distribution.”
“In the light of these persecutions, we stand uniformly by Maryam and Behtash and their freedom and right to create and to express themselves, just like any filmmaker and artist should be able to.”
The petition has been instigated by the International Coalition for Filmmakers at Risk (ICFR), a joint venture between the European Film Academy, the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR).
Alongside IDFA’s head Orwa Nyrabia and Rotterdam’s artistic director Vanja Kaludjercic, other festival directors signing the petition include Venice’s Alberto Barbera and the Berlinale’s Tricia Tuttle.
Other top cinema figures joining the campaign include Céline Sciamma, Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Agnieszka Holland, Hiam Abbass, Jafar Panahi, Juliette Binoche, Isabel Coixet, Agustín Almodóvar, Marie-Ange Luciani, Nina Menkes, Robin Campillo, Rebecca Zlotowski, Alba Rohrwacher, Radu Mihaileanu, Sepideh Farsi, Joachim Trier, Volker Schlöndorff, Avi Mograbi, Laura Poitras, Emmanuelle Béart, Sandrine Bonnaire, Ira Sachs, Virginie Efira, Xavier Beauvois, Alice Diop and Philip Knatchbull.
