My Stolen Planet
A film by Farahnaz Sharifi
Farah, an Iranian woman, was born in 1979 at the end of the Islamic Revolution, shortly after the fall of the Pahlavi dynasty. Drawing on personal archives and 8mm archival recordings of strangers' lives, she contrasts moments of private joy with public defiance to show lives of women under the regimented oppression in Tehran.
Germany/Iran | 2024 | 82 minutes | Color | Persian
SYNOPSIS
Using the essayistic style of a diary, MY STOLEN PLANET (dir. Farahnaz Sharifi) traces how the Islamic Revolution changed life for women in Iran. Born in 1979 shortly after the fall of the Pahlavi dynasty, Farah draws on personal archives and found 8mm recordings of strangers’ lives to show moments of private joy and public defiance under the regimented oppression in Tehran. Throughout, she portrays Iranian women with humanity and complexity, sharing her love for her country’s textures while refusing to be diminished by repressive religious and government structures.
A collective representation of women’s lives in the Islamic Republic of Iran, the film is also characterized by personal intimacy. The filmmaker’s connection with Leyla, an Iranian professor who left the country during the revolution, adds a name and story to one of the faces in the archives. And watching her mother suffer with Alzheimer’s, Farah sees first-hand how quickly stories – personal and societal – can be forgotten, motivating her to document her unique history and perspective. A stunning visual collage of dancing and singing contrasted with public acts like burning hijabs in the streets, the film is simultaneously a beautiful reclamation of memory and a brave act of resistance.
SCREENING HIGHLIGHTS AND AWARDS
- Second Panorama Audience Award, Berlinale Panorama 2024
- German Documentary Music Award 2024, Atena Esthiaghi
- Golden Alexander, Thessaloniki International Documentary Film Festival 2024
- FIPRESCI Award, Thessaloniki International Documentary Film Festival 2024
- Roman Brodmann Preis, Haus des Dokumentarfilms - Europäisches Medienforum
- Audience Award, Bolzano International Film Festival Bozen 2024
- Next Generation Award, Taiwan International Documentary Film Festival 2024
- Best Documentary & Youth Jury Award, Festival, Der Neu Heimatfilm, Austria, 2024
- Best Documentary, Innsbruck International Film Festival, Austria 2024
- Germany Documentary Film Music Award, Dok.Fest Münich 2024
- Jean-Loup Passek Award for Best International Feature Length Film, MDOC- Melgaço International Documentary Festival 2024
- Audience Award & Peter Liechti Award, Bildrausch – Filmfest Basel 2024
- Berlinale Panorama, 2024
- CPH: DOX, 2024
- Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival, 2024
- Sheffield DocFest, 2024
- IDFA (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam), 2024
- Chicago International Film Festival, 2024
- Thessaloniki International Documentary Film Festival, 2024
- Bolzano International Film Festival Bozen, 2024
- Taiwan International Documentary Film Festival, 2024
- Docaviv International Documentary Film Festival, 2024
- DOK Leipzig, 2024
ABOUT FILMMAKER(S)
Farahnaz Sharifi
Farahnaz Sharifi is an award-winning Iranian filmmaker and film editor who was forced to go into exile at the end of 2022. She has graduated from Tehran University in Cinema studies. Her films are mostly based on archives and she uses archive images and film to tell her stories. Farahnaz is also a well known film-editor in Iran. Her recent work as an editor is an acclaimed feature length documentary film “Radiograph of a Family” which won the Best feature length documentary Film Award IDFA 2020 and an Award for creative use of archive IDFA 2020. Farahnaz has received many awards inside and outside of Iran including best film Award in Uppsala Short Film Festival. In addition, she was a jury member at IDFA 2021. Beside her career as a filmmaker and editor, she is also a writer and her book of short stories "Breathing in Open Air" has been published in Iran. (08/09)
MATERIALS
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My Stolen Planet
Farah, an Iranian woman, was born in 1979 at the end of the Islamic Revolution, shortly after the fall of the Pahlavi dynasty. Drawing on personal archives and 8mm archival recordings of strangers' lives, she contrasts moments of private joy with public defiance to show lives of women under the regimented oppression in Tehran.
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Four Wives – One Man
From Nahid Persson, the filmmaker of the award-winning Prostitution Behind the Veil, comes an intimate portrait of a polygamist family in a rural Iranian village. Persson reveals the intricacies of the relationships between the four wives, their husband, their astoundingly free-spoken mother-in-law and their numerous children. Sometimes humorous and often heartbreaking, this film follows the daily lives of the wives whose situation has turned them into both bitter rivals and co-conspirators against their abusive husband.
Persson’s camera unobtrusively and beautifully captures the range of the family’s interactions – from peaceful, pastoral scenes of a family picnic, to the temporary chaos caused by a broken faucet in the kitchen, to a furtive, whispered conversation between two wives about the latest beating. The women’s work – making bread, weaving carpets, milking and herding the sheep – provide the background to their frank conversations. Avoiding sensationalism and sentimentality, this film provides unique insights into the practice of polygamy and its effect on the women involved.
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