Firouzeh Khosrovani: Radiograph of a Family

It’s a scoop to have the constant tableau-like returns to the room in the house in Tehran. It’s beautiful to look at – in the beginning I associated to Danish Hammerhøi and his paintings of interiors – here (except for the ending of the film) without human beings. A white room that changes as the life of the director and her parents change in Iran. A white room of memories. Like a stage where a painting of a naked woman is taken down and the double bed disappears. Where mats for praying become visible and glasses with wine are away from the table. The returns serve as pauses for reflections from the photos and archive footage that form the backbone of a family story that is told voice-off by the director and through constructed dialogues between father and mother.

They married while he was studying in Geneva and she was in Tehran. She moved to Geneva to be with him, where she as a religious person „saw sin all over“ in the happy sixties, refrained from drinking and partying as her Mousieu husband – they speak French in Geneva and she could not find the right pronunciation for Monsieur.

When Firouzeh is born, the couple moves back to Tehran, and if she felt lonely abroad, she now gradually gets involved in the revolutionary movement that led to the fall of the Shah. She became a disciple of Shariati, who was an important revolutionary sociologist. She got important educational positions in the Islamic country, whereas her father found meaning in art and music. And in being with his daughter. 

The film builds very much on photos taken by the father and archive material from Geneva but also from Iran – military training for the mother and other veiled women, riots in the streets. Look at the poster… in a scene you hear the mother tearing photos apart of herself without veil, she wants to destroy memories from her non-religious past… On the wall there is now an imaginative painting of the father holding his daughter, the director…The mother, still alive, sitting in the room asks her daughter to hand her the Quran…

Norway, Iran, 2020, 82 mins. 

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Tue Steen Müller
Tue Steen Müller

Müller, Tue Steen
Documentary Consultant and Critic, DENMARK

Worked with documentary films for more than 20 years at the Danish Film Board, as press officer, festival representative and film consultant/commissioner. Co-founder of Balticum Film and TV Festival, Filmkontakt Nord, Documentary of the EU and EDN (European Documentary Network).
Awards: 2004 the Danish Roos Prize for his contribution to the Danish and European documentary culture. 2006 an award for promoting Portuguese documentaries. 2014 he received the EDN Award “for an outstanding contribution to the development of the European documentary culture”. 2016 The Cross of the Knight of the Order for Merits to Lithuania. 2019 a Big Stamp at the 15th edition of ZagrebDox. 2021 receipt of the highest state decoration, Order of the Three Stars, Fourth Class, for the significant contribution to the development and promotion of Latvian documentary cinema outside Latvia. In 2022 he received an honorary award at DocsBarcelona’s 25th edition having served as organizer and programmer since the start of the festival.
From 1996 until 2005 he was the first director of EDN (European Documentary Network). From 2006 a freelance consultant and teacher in workshops like Ex Oriente, DocsBarcelona, Archidoc, Documentary Campus, Storydoc, Baltic Sea Forum, Black Sea DocStories, Caucadoc, CinéDOC Tbilisi, Docudays Kiev, Dealing With the Past Sarajevo FF as well as programme consultant for the festivals Magnificent7 in Belgrade, DOCSBarcelona, Verzio Budapest, Message2Man in St. Petersburg and DOKLeipzig. Teaches at the Zelig Documentary School in Bolzano Italy.

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