Oscar-nominated Iranian director challenges Trump to watch her film
Iran’s first Oscar-nominated female director has challenged President Donald Trump to watch her film to see if its portrayal of ordinary Iranians’ experience of war and revolution will change his views of her country. The US president has called Iran a “terrorist nation” for involvement in conflicts in the Middle East, and derided an international deal that scrapped sanctions on Iran in return for curbs on what many in the West believe was a nuclear weapons program.
Narges Abyar’s Farsi-language film “Nafas” (Breath) follows a young girl, Bahar, living through the changes that follow Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution and the start of the IranIraq War in 1980 with her impoverished family. Her greatest fear is losing the chronically asthmatic father who is bringing her and her three brothers and sisters up on his own, and she spends much of her time making sure that he is still breathing. Bahar’s devout grandmother, far from being kindly, punishes her for refusing to go to Koran school.
The film and Abyar’s Oscar nomination have angered hardline conservatives in Iran’s establishment, who call the Iran-Iraq war the “Sacred Defence” and consider the movie anti-Islamic. “Three thousand (Iranian) children were killed during the war. Why should I not show all these?” Abyar told Reuters in an interview. “This film promotes peace.” She said it could also “help American society ... to understand that Iranians are not terrorists, as claimed by some politicians”. “Trump is using the language of threat against Iran ... what will he think if he watches Nafas? Will he continue to threaten Iran?”
“I wish I were a boy”— Reuters