She has been living in Paris for many years, but the Iranian director Sepideh Farsi is not at all known in our country. She lived in Athens (“I love it, it reminds me of my childhood in Tehran,” she says), speaks fluent Greek, and her film Tomorrow I’ll Cross (2019), filmed in Greece and Turkey, was screened at the 21st Francophone Film Festival.

The director herself, again, is no stranger to the recent protests in Iran. He notes that over the past 20 years there has been a wave of similar protests, not necessarily covered by the Western media: it depends on how the uprisings develop, and usually they reach a certain point before the regime suppresses them. Typical examples are the 2009 Green Revolution against Ahmadinejad, and the wave of protests that erupted a decade later over higher fuel prices, killing 1,500 people.

“The peculiarity of the current protests is that they are not held for economic reasons, but to protect women’s human rights,” says Sepideh Farsi, recalling the death of Mahshi Amini by the Iranian vice police that set the whole thing in motion. “I think, in fact,” the director continues, “with the data so far, the situation in the country will not return to its previous form. Women take to the streets and protest in an incredible way, and on their side are men who defend their rights. This has happened before, but not to this extent. And it’s hard to predict what will happen in the end. While President Raisi was in New York (ss: at the UN General Assembly), the regime was careful not to make too much noise in the international arena. Now that he’s back, the police are hitting harder. Everything will depend on the balance between demonstrations and their suppression. I think, however, that women will not return to what they were even ten days ago. Never”.

Sepide Farsi, for her part, wonders if she will ever be able to return to her country. The 57-year-old filmmaker left Iran at 18 because there was no other way out: at 16 she was imprisoned by the regime, and when she left, she was not allowed to study at school, and then at the university – she graduated from it at home. She then attempted to flee to the US, but was denied a visa.

She settled in Paris, from where she returned to her country several times, most recently in 2009: “My film Tehran Without Authorization (Tehran Without Authorization) was going to the Locarno festival, and I openly sided with the protesters.” Farsi says. “They interrogated me and my associates, and after I left, they told me that if I returned, I would not be able to leave again. That’s why I didn’t come back.”

When asked if the Iranian diaspora excels in the arts or if this is a stereotype, Sepideh Farsi says yes, for obvious reasons: Iranian artists face severe censorship in their country, so they leave. Something similar, he says, was done by Mikis Theodorakis and Melina Mercouri during the junta in Greece.

However, she is optimistic. There are cracks in the Iranian regime that didn’t exist before. Two major parties recently called for an end to police patrols and the requirement to wear hijabs — “they realized that if they persisted in such strong oppression, the entire system of power would be in jeopardy,” the director assesses. He also watches in amazement as celebrities on Iranian state television take the side of the protesters.

“Civil society,” he concludes, “especially its new members, is constantly changing for the better. In this sense, the current protests are not new. However, this time the tipping point has already been passed.