There was passion in her answers, although written, and it was evident even in the punctuation marks. Actress Mina Kavani, born and raised in Tehran, naturalized French for many years, fought word for word. She represented the women of the country who fight for their freedom and dignity to the death. He speaks in the first plural, as if he lives among them. That’s why, and when we ask her if she believes that “women’s movements in 2022, not only in Iran but also in other countries, will contribute to the strengthening of democracy”, she turns her desire into confidence:

“I think that we are living in something that will go down not only in the history of women, but also in the history of mankind. And that’s the most important thing. But how quickly and when this movement will change things, I have no idea. The most important thing is a huge energy, these muffled voices that finally escaped after 43 years…”.

In a video released from a screening of Jaafar Panahi’s No Bears at Lincoln Center during the New York Film Festival, Mina Cavani lets her own “stifled” voice be heard as she holds up a poster inscribed with three words symbolizing the Iranian struggle” Women, life, freedom” and the public idolizes her.

He represented there, both in Venetian Mostra in September, and in Thessaloniki these days, as a guest of the 63rd International Festival, the great Iranian artist Jafar Panahi, who is in the custody of the regime. He was arrested in Tehran in July and is serving a six-year prison sentence after being found guilty of aiding “propaganda against the Islamic Republic”…

Yesterday in the “Olympion” they showed “There are no bears.” Absent from the room, Panahi is on screen as he appears in the film (which blurs the line between fiction and documentary), playing himself: a director isolated in an Iranian village somewhere on the Turkish border who is trying to complete the film remotely (directing shooting from a computer).

“No Bears is about two love stories and a director trying to make his film no matter what,” says Mina Cavani. “All stories are interconnected, as the director watches one while filming another. They are also connected thematically as the characters fight for their freedom and face the hurdles of social thinking and politics. To love freely, to create freely, to live freely. Jafar is unfortunately not with us to discuss this, but his exemplary filmography and great courage speak for themselves.”

“I think we are living in something that will mark not only the history of women, but also the history of mankind.”

We ask her about her role in the film. Zara, who plays, is a woman who refuses to leave the country on a fake passport when she realizes that her partner cannot follow her. The impasse ends fatally. How does she evaluate her decision? “I recognized most of myself in Zara,” she replies. “She is passionate about love and life, and the exile took everything from her … it crushed everything. Migration did not make her happy, it made her cruel and tragic… She wanted to be at least the mistress of her fate, a small part of her life. It was Medea who was supposed to “kill her children.”

Panahi stated that, despite the severe restrictions, he would never leave his country and would not want to live anywhere else. Mina Cavani made a different choice: “I am from a generation that has only seen the Islamic Republic, the Revolutionary Guards and their fascism. I belong to a generation that grew up with anger and hatred towards the government, all my friends and people of my generation dreamed of leaving Iran and this happened to me too. At the age of 16, I dreamed of continuing my acting career in France, away from the dictatorship … But this does not prevent me from suffering from my exile, from the fact that I cannot return to my country … “.

If anyone asks her which “identity” prevails over her, French or Iranian, then her point of view will now be experienced: “I feel first a person, then an artist who would like to be free. Iran is my heart, this is my nostalgia, these are my feelings. France is my head, it is an open road to infinity… I carry both in myself and on myself.”

Mina Cavani’s voice works as a speaker. He exclaims for granted: “The difficulty is to maintain the interest of the West. The difficulty is when we are not supported, when we are not listened to. The difficulty is that the Western world and politicians think only about their own interests and ignore us … My duty is to be the voice of those who are not heard.

Does she believe in a better future for Iran and especially for women? “I hope so with all my heart. But it is true that something has already changed for the women of my country.”