Iranian auteur Mahnaz Mohammadi had to shoot her second fiction feature, Roya, in secret. After all, she has not been officially allowed to make movies for years.
Roya, which receives its world premiere in the Berlin International Film Festival‘s Panorama lineup on Saturday, feels extra timely given all the recent headlines out of Iran, from massive anti-government protests to the regime’s crackdown against demonstrators, including arrests and killings on a big scale.
After all, the film tells the story of an Iranian teacher named Roya who is imprisoned in Tehran’s Evin Prison, where the filmmaker herself had to spend some time in the past, for her political beliefs. She ends up facing an impossible choice: either make a forced televised confession, which is commonly used by the country’s regime, or remain locked up in that three-square-meter prison cell.
As such, Roya becomes a journey into the dark recesses of human minds, exploring how solitary confinement reshapes perception, memory and identity and how it is used by those in power to weaken prisoners’ resilience and readiness to resist.
The cast of Roya is led by Turkish star Melisa Sözen, familiar to audiences from the likes of Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Cannes winner Winter Sleep and French TV series The Bureau, with Maryam Palizban, Hamidreza Djavdan, Mohammad Ali Hosseinalipour, Bacho Meburishvili, and Gholamhassan Taseiri also featuring.
Totem Films is handling world sales on the movie produced by Farzad Pak at Hamburg-based PakFilm in co-production with Europe Media Nest (Czech Republic), Amour Fou (Luxembourg) and NDR, ARD Degeto Film, BR and SWR. Roya also received support from MOIN Filmförderung Hamburg Schleswig-Holstein, Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg and Film Fund Luxembourg.
THR can now premiere an exclusive clip from Roya, which is not for the faint of heart. The command “Spin!” will surprise you. The words “I told you this is the end of the world” will pain you. But there is worse to come. Watch the clip from Roya here.
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