Iranian ‘Ballad Of A White Cow’ Directors Behtash Sanaeeha & Maryam Moghadam Banned From Travel As They Face Trial Over New Film
Iranian directors Behtash Sanaeeha and Maryam Moghadam, whose last collaboration Ballad Of A White Cow made waves on the festival circuit, have been banned from travel and face a trial in relation to their upcoming film My Favourite Cake.
The pair discovered they were subject to a travel ban at Tehran airport at the end of September after their passports were confiscated as they went to catch a flight to Paris to work on post-production of the new film.
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They were subsequently told that they faced a trial related to the production.
Local media reported that Iranian security forces had raided the house of the film’s editor, seizing rushes and other materials related to the production.
The country’s hard-line Islamist authorities are believed to have been angered by the work, which according to the official logline, revolves around the “life behind closed doors of an aging woman who dares to live her desires in a country where women’s rights are heavily restricted”.
The directors are now due to be tried by a judge connected to Iran’s Evin jail, which is one of the harshest penitentiary institutions in the country.
My Favourite Cake was one of the hot projects at the Berlinale Co-Production Market in 2020, where it won the €20,000 ($21,000) Eurimages Co-production Development Award.
The film is a co-production between Filmsazan Javan (Iran), Caractères Productions (France), HOBAB (Sweden) and Watchmen Productions (Germany).
Sanaeeha and Moghadam’s travel ban and trial comes amid a harsh crackdown on artists in Iran, which has intensified in the wake of the ongoing Woman Life Freedom protests, sparked by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in September 2022.
Moghadam, who holds Iranian and Swedish citizenship, has been in the crosshairs of Iran’s draconian authorities in the past.
She was banned from travelling for two years after playing the lead role in Jafar Panahi’s 2013 clandestinely shot film Closed Curtain, and then in 2019, she found herself yanked off a major Iranian film production on the orders of the Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance.
The actress and filmmaker responded to the de facto ban on her working in mainstream Iranian cinema with an open letter asking for the reason behind the move.
Sanaeeha and Moghadam were also sued by the Revolutionary Guards for Ballad of A White Cow, which tells the devastating story of a woman who discovers her executed husband was innocent of the charges against him.
The pair were charged with “propaganda against the regime and acting against national security”. They were later acquitted but the film remains banned in Iran to this day.
Outside of the country, Ballad Of A White Cow enjoyed a buzzy world premiere in Competition at the Berlinale in 2021 and then played in a raft of festivals including Stockholm, Zurich and Tribeca.
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