'Your Work Is To Make Films And Not Stay In Jail'

'The work of a film-maker is going out and making films.'
'And if you are in prison for 15 years, you can't make films.'

Last year, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the Iranian human rights activist Narges Mohammadi, who is imprisoned for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran.

Iranian-German film-maker Ali Samadi Ahadi has made a film inspired by Mohammadi's story.

Seven Days recently had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. The film narrates the story of Maryam, a jailed human rights activist, who is granted rare medical leave, has a chance to escape from Iran, and re-unite with her two kids and husband, who are living in exile in Germany.

Gorgeously shot, Seven Days takes Maryam on an arduous journey through snow and mountains.

Her children are angry because of her choice to stay in prison, instead of being a mother to them. How Maryam balances her personal and public life is the key theme of the film.

Another Iranian film-maker Mohammad Rasoulof (Berlinale 2020 Golden Bear winner, There is No Evil) wrote the script of Seven Days. Rasoulof himself was banned from making films in Iran because of his political activism. But like many other Iranian filmm-akers, Rasoulof has been managing to secretly make films.

His latest film The Seed of the Sacred Fig won the Special Jury Prize at this summer's Cannes Film Festival.

In a surprise development this summer, Rasoulof managed to escape from Iran by foot and his story is quite similar to that of Maryam, a fictional character.

Aseem Chhabra spoke to Ahadi in Toronto about the making of Seven Days and the risks that many Iranian film-makers have taken despite attempts by the authorities to restrict their works.

"We have so many brave women, who are imprisoned and separated from their kids and husbands for years. We have a woman with a seven-year-old boy. She got the death sentence because they say she is a counter-revolutionary and against the system. And these stories are happening again and again. People like Narges Mohammadi are just a glimpse of the whole situation," Ahadi says.

Ali, your story is so current since it is inspired by Narges Mohammadi's case. Did you work with Mohammad Rasoulof on the script after she won the Nobel Peace Prize?

Actually, the script was developed in the last seven years.

Mohammad Rasoulof was working on it much earlier.

Mohammad and Narges know each other; he knew about her circumstances.

The government has been putting pressure on her for a long time to leave the country. They have said, don't stay here otherwise we cannot guarantee you will survive. But she is determined to stay and fight back in Iran.

But what about her family? Are they out of the country?

They are in France. But this is only partly her story.

We have so many brave women who are imprisoned and separated from their kids and husbands for years.

We have a woman with a seven-year-old boy. She got the death sentence because they say she is a counter-revolutionary and against the system. And these stories are happening again and again.

People like Narges Mohammadi are just a glimpse of the whole situation.

Did Narges actually receive seven days off and did she cross the border?

No. I mean, even if it had happened, I wouldn't show it in the film. She is still in prison and any such mention would put her life at risk.

How's her health?

Very bad. Just last week, she was beaten up very badly because they are protesting against death sentences given to men and women.

The government put a lot of pressure on the women to end the protest.

But when they didn't, the soldiers stormed into the women's section in the prison last week and started to beat them up.

Many received serious injuries.

They are not allowed to have visits from their lawyers.

They would like to open up cases against the abuse of the prisoners, but at the moment, they are not allowed.

The other coincidence about this film relates to Mohammad Rasoulof. He managed to escape from Iran. I was in Cannes this summer when he showed up for the world premiere of his film The Seed of the Sacred Fig (Germany's official entry for the Best International Oscar for 2025).

Yes, true. He came out and said, 'Look, Ali, now, this has happened to me as well.'

It is a very private and difficult decision to make but fully understandable, especially if you are a film-maker.

Your work is to make films and not stay in jail.

I can understand the situation of Narges Mohammadi or Nelson Mandela or Mahatma Gandhi to say I will resist, I will stay here. And may the whole world know that I am in prison. This is the work of activists.

But the work of a film-maker is going out and making films. And if you are in prison for 15 years, you can't make films.

Had Rasulullah left Iran by the time you started to make the film?

No, he was still in Iran. That was the reason why we kept the secret that he was the scriptwriter working on this project.

I just watched another Iranian film The Witness which played at Venice this year. Jafar Panahi not only wrote the script, but also edited it. He was also arrested and then banned from making films. He is out of the country now.
How many other Iranian film-makers have left the country? You, Ali Abbasi (Holy Spider), Mohsen Makhmalbaf (Kandahar) all live out of Iran.

Well, I was always out of the country.

I moved to Germany when I was 12, so I have been living there for a long time.

But in the recent times, the suppression got so extreme that my colleagues are not able to work.

What can a film-maker do when he or she is not allowed to make films?

You can open up a bar or a coffee shop or whatever, but it is not your passion.

Your passion is to make films. The big question is how successful can they be living outside Iran?

Ali Abbasi and me, we don't count as Iranians anymore because we were too young.

We learned about the society we are living in at a very early age, but if you migrate as a refugee at an older age, it is difficult. It's hard to learn the language and make the connection with a new country.

The actress Golshifteh Farahani now lives in Paris. It is so sad that so many talented Iranian film personalities live outside the country. Even the master film-maker Abbas Kiarostami lived in exile and made films in Italy and in Japan.
There are film-makers who are banned from traveling when their films are shown at film festivals outside Iran.
That was the case of Maryam Moghadam and Behtash Sanaeeha, whose new film My Favorite Cake was in competition at Berlin this year.

But most of my Iranian colleagues in exile were not able to work continuously, like Kiarostami, Amir Naderi and Asghar Farhadi.

Farhadi still manages to stay in Iran.

But when he decided to shoot out of the country, the quality of the films (The Past and Everybody Knows) was not good. This happens all the time.

I always bring up the example of the German film-makers during the Third Reich when they had to leave Germany or Europe.

Germany had a big film industry, but only few people could survive in America.

It is a very universal problem. You have populist dictators all over the world. The question then is how much we are willing to fight for our values. This is something which links us all around the world.

Where did you shoot this film?

It is partly shot in Iran. We shot some scenes in Tehran secretly.

We organised shooting permissions for another project and then started to film, smuggled the sequences out of the country.

We thought of shooting in Turkey, but that's not safe for Iranian film-makers.

In fact, it is not even safe for us when we hold European passports. They can easily arrest you and send you to Iran.

The last film that Jafar Panahi secretly made, No Bears, was partly shot in Turkey. Where did you shoot your film then, especially that gorgeous village where Maryam meets her family?

We shot in Kaspiki. It is in northern part of Georgia.

I know the characters who play the husband and the two children were supposed to be in Germany. But the lead actress Vishka Asayesh, was she in Iran?

She was supposed to be in Iran, but actually, we recreated the scenes elsewhere.

Well, that's what film-making is all about.

True. Making a fiction film doesn't mean that you have to document everything to tell the truth.

We try to tell the reality in Iran, but not every single thing has to be real.

Vishka was in Iran, but she left the country two months before we started to shoot the film.

She said she would never shoot in front of a camera with a scarf. She's a star in Iran, but she said, if this is the price to pay so be it. I will never shoot wearing a scarf.

But will she be able to go back to Iran now that she has made this film?

No. She is in Paris at the moment. I hope she can start working outside Iran.

In your case, although you must be a German citizen, I don't think you will ever be allowed to enter Iran also.

I stopped traveling to Iran because during the 2009 Iranian elections, I made a movie called The Green Wave.

After that, it was clear that I will never be able to go back, and that brings the similarity in my family.

Just like Maryam's teenage daughter, my daughter was also angry with my decision. She was seven at that time and I never asked her. Suddenly I took her away from her grandparents, her second homeland.

I know you narrated an Iranian story, but does your filmmaking get compromised when you are living outside Iran? In terms of the texture, the narrative?

In a way, yes. I tried to do my best by bringing the set and costume designers from Iran. They gave us the style update of what is going on in Iran, what people are wearing and how the streets look.

But you are right that since I live outside Iran, my rhythm and tempo are different.

My DOP (Director Of Photography) Mathias Neumann is a very German guy, who fought a heroic fight for this project, filming in minus 20-25 degrees Celsius. He didn't understand the language, but was behind the camera and crying because the emotions were so strong.

We spoke seven languages during the shoot: Persian German, Georgian, Russian, Turkish, Azari and Kurdish.

Actors came from Paris, Berlin and Austria.

We were in the middle of nowhere, 12 kilometres away from the Russian border, in the snow. We were 70 people and we decided to make this film.