How can one talk about Iran today? How can you do it when you left Iran as a child and the Persian language is now completely foreign to you? Sanaz Azari was born in Iran but grew up in Belgium. Behind the closed doors of a classroom in Brussels, she is learning how to read and write in her mother tongue. There is a textbook from the time of the Islamic Revolution on her desk. In front of her, there is a blackboard, on which her teacher, a grey-haired Iranian, exiled as well, carefully traces words and sentences which become a gateway to the history and culture of Iran. Gradually, the didactic method of the lessons evolves into a poetic, visual collage, which introduces the notion of freedom and questions the meaning of a revolution. Getting close into the surface of those images comes down to finding a personal space of freedom as a sort of re-appropriation of one’s mother tongue, one’s country and its culture via film. Azari keeps herself in the background, through a strategy of self-effacement meant to give centrality to language itself and the man who teaches it as if on a theatre stage. That language is indeed her mother tongue, though she can neither read nor write it.
AUDIO: Persian
SUBTITLE: Romanian, English
awards and festivals
2015 - Festival International du Film Oriental de Genève, Elvetia, Mention spéciale pour sa poésie
2015 - Rotterdam International Film Festival, Olanda
2015 - Documentaire sur grand ecran, Franta
2015 - Indielisboa, Portugalia
2014 - Festival international du documentaire de Marseille, Franta, Georges de Beauregard International Award, Mention Speciale
2014 - Kaunas International Film Festival, Lituania
2014 - Festival International du Film Francophone de Namur, Belgia