Jaii keh khoda nist
In an empty room on the edge of Paris, a prison cell is under construction. Director Mehran Tamadon is putting together a scaffold of wooden slats to mark out the walls and bunk beds. He’s talking to Homa Kalhori, who is busy painting prison bars on the wall and corrects him when the space he is constructing gets too large. She says the cells at Ghezel Hesar were much smaller: eight square metres for 25 to 30 women.
It is years since Tamadon has been in Iran. He himself was never imprisoned, although his passport was confiscated for a month after he filmed Iranien (Berlinale Forum 2014). By speaking with Kalhori and two other former political prisoners – Taghi Rahmani and Mazyar Ebrahimi – he is now looking to find out more about the years they spent in Evin or Ghezel Hesar. (Festival information, Berlin, 2023)
How can the horror of political imprisonment and torture be told? The Iranian filmmaker and architect Mehran Tamadon, who has lived in France since his youth and returns to his homeland time and again for projects, has found an impressive way. He places his characters Homa Kalhori, Taghi Rahmani and Mazyar Ebrahimi in a space which recreates their former prisons - „where God is not“, as one of the jailors said. And as such, becomes a rogue scenario that triggers in them memories of past suffering, humiliation and torture. An original cinematic device allowing for a performative reenactment to sharing their harrowing experiences, which becomes a denunciation of a reality that is still Iran’s nowadays.