Kaveh Daneshmand: My dream is to one day work in Iran with freedom I have here
Iran-born Kaveh Daneshmand moved to Prague to study film a decade and a half ago and has been based in the city ever since. Alongside his own filmmaking projects, Daneshmand heads the Írán:ci festival of Iranian cinema. On the eve of this year’s edition, I asked him how his homeland manages to produce great films despite severe restrictions – and whether he could ever imagine returning to the Islamic country.
Could you please tell us something about your background? Where did you grow up?
“I grew up in Iran. I was born in Karaj, which is a city close to Teheran. When I was 10 my family moved to Teheran, so I spent most of my teenage years and then university years in Teheran.
“Then when I was 28 I moved to Prague to study filmmaking – and since then I’ve been living in Prague.”
What first drew you to film, I presume in your teens?
“Actually in my teens I was very much interested in music – we even had a band.
“It was during university when I got really interested in films, watching some of the world’s classic films, and then slowly getting really interested because of a community of very close friends who were also cinephiles.
“Eventually after university and compulsory military service I decided to study film. So I dropped all my education, which was focused on engineering, and just came to the Czech Republic and started from scratch.”
For many years Iran has been known as one of the best countries in the world when it comes to filmmaking. People wouldn’t say that about Czechia. Why did you come from Iran to study film here?
“The Czech Republic has a very good reputation when it comes to film education. There is also a very strong film heritage here.
“It is true that the current situation of Czech cinema is a bit complicated. There are of course interesting films coming out, but they’re also not very internationally renowned, let’s say, when it comes to filmmaking.
“But I was also very much interested in the opportunity to study film in a European context. I thought I could bring something from my own background and learn something from European culture.
“The Czech Republic was fascinating. I was very much interested in Hrabal and Kundera, like most people, and then Miloš Forman, [Věra] Chytilová, Jiří Menzel, Juraj Herz.
“So I slowly found a school and then I applied and came here. It was a very pleasant city and a beautiful country, so I stayed.”
There are obviously a lot of obstacles in the way of filmmakers in Iran. But still, there are so many great directors, so many great movies. What’s the secret of the success of Iranian cinema, do you think?
“I don’t know. It’s probably because we are a country in a lot of trouble [laughs]. Artists are feeling all sorts of pressures: social pressures, personal pressures, financial pressures.
“It’s a country which is always making headlines in all the international news [laughs]. There is not a week goes by without something about Iran that is usually problematic.
“So I think that’s one of the main forces that generates creativity. Sadly.”
I don’t know any country in the world where one film resulted in a revolution.
Last year the Írán:ci festival opened with No Bears by Jafar Panahi, who was in jail at that time. After that Saeed Roustayi was jailed for an “unauthorised” screening at Cannes. Why is the Iranian regime so tough on filmmakers?
“I don’t know. I think it’s a very strange and naive way of trying to suppress freedom of expression. I don’t know any country in the world where one film resulted in a revolution. I think in fact what the Iranian regime is doing is in fact buying itself more and more negative credit internationally.
“Iranian artists are doing what every artist across the world is doing. There are a lot of Czech filmmakers that were criticising the Communist regime before the revolution – and of course they had to be subtle and of course there was always suppression – but even back then I think it was completely wrong.
“Because in fact if you work with the artists you will be able to produce magnificent works that will also create a very nice national identity for the regime. But the Iranian regime is a dictatorship which has its own logic, own incomprehensible mindset, with which it is suppressing artists.
“Naturally this once again results in those artists becoming more visible internationally [laughs], their films more celebrated – which works against the Iranian regime eventually.”
How do the restrictions that are faced by Iranian directors shape how they actually go about making movies?
“It’s changing through time. There was a time when Iranian filmmakers were trying to criticize the regime in a poetic way, or by implications and with metaphors and symbols.
The criticism of the regime in Iranian cinema is becoming bolder, without all that symbolism that it used to carry.
“But now as the tension between the regime and the middle class and general public is becoming more and more obvious and less subtle the films are becoming more and more aggressive too. There are films now shot in Iran without following the female head cover protocols. People are shooting films without any recognition of the rules dictated by the Ministry of Culture.
“So it is changing. The criticism of the Iranian regime in Iranian cinema is becoming bolder, becoming more obvious, and without all that symbolism that it used to carry.”
Sometimes people tell me that Czechoslovak film was great in the New Wave days [partly] because of the restrictions, that restrictions are good. Do you feel that they can be good?
“[Laughs] I think that of course restrictions are of course harmful to the human soul. There is no question about restrictions being destructive to human freedom of expression.
“It’s not the restrictions that engage artists in creativity, it’s actually the reaction to the restrictions – meaning that the artists strive for more freedom of expression, they feel stronger about it.
“So they are angrier [laughs] and that anger, I think, can result in creativity, and that madness can. That’s what I think you can see in ‘60s and ‘70s Czechoslovak cinema.”
Do a lot of the better Iranian filmmakers leave the country? Or they tend to stay and come and go? How do they usually navigate these difficulties?
We now even have the cinema of the diaspora – it’s a huge part of Iranian cinema.
“There are many of the great Iranian filmmakers inside Iran. There are also great Iranian filmmakers outside Iran. We now even have the cinema of the diaspora in Iranian cinema – it’s a huge part of Iranian cinema.
“We have the cinema of the second generation – children of immigrants who have very strong roots and connections to Iran but grew up in a completely different context.
“The Iranian immigration has been so high in the last 45 years that there is a very strong community of Iranians outside Iran, in Europe, in North America and elsewhere.”
We spoke last year just before the 2023 edition of Írán:ci, which had the theme Women, Life, Freedom. Things were looking pretty bleak in Iran at that time, a few months after the death of Mahsa Amini, which sparked major demonstrations and brutal repression. Iran has kind of faded from the news since then. What’s happening there now?
“It’s a tension that continues. We are very close actually to the anniversary of the Ukrainian airplane that got shot in the airspace of Tehran and the case is still open in court.
“There are a lot of daily arrests of Iranian artists and intellectuals. There is unrest across the country, of course on a smaller scale.
“With all the news in the world, as long as there is not something major happening in one country it won’t make it to the headlines. And what is happening now in Iran is happening in the streets, in the lives of the people.
“But there are always low times to a change and a transition and there are high times, and I think is a time when it’s accumulating once again and once again there will be a crime from the Iranian regime that sparks even bigger protests across the country.
“Now as you know there are huge amounts of other troubles also happening across the world, in Palestine and in Israel and in Ukraine and many other places in the world. It’s hard to keep Iran in the headlines with so much mess happening across the world.
“That’s what we are also trying to do in our festival this year. We are expanding to more countries, we are showing films from other countries which are dealing, in one way or the other, with social and political situations that Iran is dealing with.”
A trailer for the opening film at this year’s festival.
The 11th edition of Írán:ci is starting very soon. Will there be films in the festival that reflect what has happened in the country since September 2022?
“Absolutely. We are even having a very strong political panel one of the films by Abbas Kiarostami. It’s his most political film, which he made at the beginning of the Iranian Revolution, it’s called First Case, Second Case. We are showing for the first time in the Czech Republic the restored version of the film, which is done by mk2, one of the biggest French distributors.
“We have two guests coming and discussing what has happened since last year in Iran.
“Most of the films we are showing in the festival reflect the turbulence in Iran after the Women, Life, Freedom uprisings. Our opening film is about immigration. We have films about political exile.
“Most of our films are innovatively political. It’s not that we are a political festival, it’s just that Iranian cinema is extremely political. The artists are very engaged in political topics and most of our films are ultimately talking about humanity and human relationships between ordinary people, but in the context of a very politically turbulent background.”
The Iranian regime is in a very uncomfortable situation. They’re under a lot of tension, nationally and internationally, regionally.
Obviously you don’t have a crystal ball, Kaveh. But still I’m curious – what do you think is the most likely way that Iran will in the next couple of decades, say? Do you think there’s any chance of any major change?
“I think so. I think that the Iranian regime is in a very uncomfortable situation. They always say it about football: that the goalkeepers are the ones that are very exhausted because they’re always in some sort of a stiff muscle mode – they have to be consciously anxious about potential [laughs] balls coming their way.
“That’s the state of the Iranian regime now. They are tiptoeing and they’re under a lot of tension, nationally and internationally, regionally.
“The Iranian population is getting poorer and poorer on a daily basis. The political situation in Iran is getting worse and worse.
“The majority of the country is unhappy with the Iranian regime and now we are talking about the poor class as well; it used to be the middle class, but now it’s expanding. Even among the religious people, the Iranian regime has lost its credibility.
“I do believe that there will be a change. The problem with the Middle East is it’s so complicated – you would never if it will resolve into something positive or negative.
“But going by the general intellectual capacities of the Iranian middle class and the majority, I would hope that Iran will move towards something more positive, with a female-led sort of movement towards a better future.
“That’s my hope and my wish and hopefully something that I’ll be able to see.”
My final question: Can you ever imagine living there again?
“Yeah, I think so. I would to live in Iran. It’s very hard today. I wouldn’t want to live in Iran as it is today. Because the projects I’m working on as a filmmaker… I have a feature film made myself which is a Czech-French co-production [Le syndrome de l'été sans fin/Endless Summer Syndrome], which I would never have been able to make in Iran; the next project I’m doing I would not be able to do in Iran.
“For the festival I’m organising in Prague I’m dealing with a lot of problems inside Iran, so today Iran is a very problematic place for me.
“But it is my homeland, it is where I grew up, Persian is the language I speak as my mother tongue. And it would be a dream to be able one day to work in Iran with the freedom that I have here.”
