Oakville ’24: One Must Wash Eyes

The CCP is not the only oppressive regime engaging in the extraterritorial harassment of their critics. Iranian agents have already been indictment for the attempted kidnapping of democracy advocate Masih Alinejad—on American soil. She is a prominent activist, but the brutal Islamist regime has also targeted average people too. Consequently, Sahar has good reasons to worry about herself and her family when she is photographed at a Canadian demonstration in support of the Woman, Life, Freedom movement in director-screenwriter Sepideh Yadegar’s One Must Wash Eyes, which premieres tonight at the 2024 Oakville Film Festival.

To remain in Canada on her student visa Sahar must pay her overdue tuition. Unfortunately, her mother has been unable to transfer the money, because her Uncle Hekmat has yet to buy out her late father’s share of their business. Her mother is trusting, but Sahar is justifiably suspicious. Things go from bad to worse when she is clearly and identifiably photographed at a Woman, Life, Freedom demonstration.

Immediately, her boss at the Persian grocery store fires her, fearing his association with her will jeopardize his frequent visits home. (Frankly, his shocking lack of sympathy for the democracy cries out for fuller exploration.) Shortly thereafter, Sahar gets a call from her mother, informing her the family received a threatening visit from the Basiji morals police.

Even though rational people would consider Sahar the smallest of small fries, viewers need to understand there nothing far-fetched in Yadegar’s screenplay. In fact, the authoritarian regime comes after everyday people like her all the time. If anything, Yadegar shows tremendous restraint in her depiction of their extraterritorial repression.

Despite the necessarily heavy political themes, One Must Wash Eyes (an awkward title, almost guaranteed to change that refers to Persian poet Sohrab Sepehri’s verse) is still more of a character study, examining the impact of extreme stress and alienation on the increasingly desperate Sahar.

Pegah Ghafoori (from From) is terrific as Sahar. She is an almost painfully realistic character, who makes a lot of mistakes, but they are all only too believable. Throughout it all, Ghafoori keeps her performance honest and grounded. Remember when you finished your degree? Now try to imagine going through that time while fearing for your safety and that of your family, but not trusting anyone enough to ask for help.

Titanic, Suitable Version for Iranian Families (short), at UCLA Celebration of Iranian Cinema

Advocates of censorship argue it leads to more social stability, but the opposite is true. It also makes people dumber and impoverishes cultural life. If you doubt any of those points, the staff’s experiences preparing James Cameron’s Titanic for the Iranian state broadcaster will set you straight. It is an exercise in stupidity captured in a brilliant short film. The satire stings throughout writer-director Farnoosh Samadi’s Titanic, Suitable Version for Iranian Families, which screens tomorrow during the UCLA Celebration of Iranian Cinema.

The state broadcaster prematurely announced the premiere of a Titanic in “suitable version for Iranian families,” creating an online firestorm. The Islamist regime loyalists are offended by the notion that a decadent Hollywood movie could be such an event in Iran. Reform-oriented moderates are put off by the extensive censorship they rightly assume such a broadcast would require. According to staff-members coming in and out of the office-editing suite, at least an hour has already been axed, with more cuts looming.

Don’t start boycotting James Cameron, because the staff—all state employees—readily admit they have pirated the film. In discussions cable networks could relate to, they mostly agree they need to start airing films like Titanic to compete with satellite dishes. However, they cannot really show Titanic, because they must cut scenes, change dialogue, and add clothing through rotoscope animation—and not just to nude scenes, but also any neckline with more than four inches visible. As if all that were not sufficiently absurd, they are bowdlerizing Titanic while Woman, Life, Freedom protests rage on the streets below.

Frontline: Inside the Iranian Uprising

How many times must the citizens of Iran take to the streets to protest their oppressive clerical regime, before the governments of the liberal West finally do something tangible to support them? Sadly, we are still asking. Who in the Biden administration could object to the most recent Iranian protest slogan: “women, life, freedom?” It is indeed Iranian women who were at the forefront of the latest round of protests and it has been Iranian women who have been dying as a result. Drawing on a wealth of protest footage posted (at least temporarily) to social media and authenticated by third parties, Nightline documents the demonstrations and the regime’s brutal response in director Majed Neisi’s “Inside the Iranian Uprising,” which premieres on digital this Thursday.

It all started with the murder Mahsa (Jina) Amini, a Kurdish Iranian woman, who died in a Tehran hospital, after having been arrested by the Iranian Morality Police. Her story went viral throughout Iran and around the world, after reporters (one of whom, Niloofar Hamedi, has since been arrested) published photos of Amini in a coma and her parents grieving in the hospital.

Many women were so outraged, they took to the streets, burning their hijabs in public protests, even though that very definitely made them targets for the same savagery that killed Amini. One of those was Nika Shakarami, a 16-year-old YouTube influencer, who mysteriously disappeared after burning her hijab in a protest, until the government finally produced her body nine days later, claiming she was the victim of a highly convenient suicide.

Yet, some of the most horrific accounts of torture in this Frontline report come from men, like the medical student who bravely offers an on-camera description of how he was sodomized with a police baton. Neisi and the Frontline producers mask the identity of another torture victim, using a British voice actor to overdub his shocking account of how the so-called Morality Police raped him and another man while they were in custody.