A PEOPLE IN THE SHADOWS

The lives of the Iranian people are overshadowed by the traumas of their past, the complexities of the present, and worries of what the future may bring. Bani Khoshnoudi ‘s film unfolds in three sections - Yesterday's Graves, Today's Ghosts and Tomorrow's Martyrs - and shows the inhabitants of her home city of Tehran going about their daily lives "stuck in the middle of a context that they did not choose." In this giant metropolis the scars of the revolution and the long Iran-Iraq war have not yet healed. There is talk of American sanctions and possible attacks. Young people are caught between the encroaching influence of consumerism from the West and vehement criticisms of its ideology. Ayatollahs call for martyrdom. The Iranian regime uses aggressive propaganda to try to manipulate its people. Thirty years after the fall of the Shah and twenty years since the end of the war with Iraq, a shopkeeper discusses the past with his customers and young people attend an underground concert where political criticism is rife. This is an intimate, nuanced picture of today’s Iran.