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Mahnaz Mohammadi is a survivor. Iranian filmmaker and women’s rights activist has been arrested and imprisoned several times. In 2011, he was imprisoned for several months and tortured. In 2014, he was sentenced to five years and spent several months in prison. A few years ago, he met one of the first people to interrogate him, since he had just been arrested.
“Do you know what he said to me?” He says. “He said he told his friends that after doing all this, if I go back behind the camera, then they won’t do anything to me.” When I heard this from his mouth I thought: ‘He is telling the truth, no one can hurt me.'”
However, Mohammadi keeps looking over his shoulder. He left Iran to finish his latest film and is living in Europe on a three-year visa. Recently, a journalist explained about the city where he lives: “I thought that now I have to move, I am not afraid of dying but I feel that I am not safe.”
We meet at his friend’s house in a leafy street in London. Mohammadi, 51 years old, will present two new films. He has a calm demeanor; his voice sometimes barely above a whisper. But his gaze is steady: “You can ask me anything.”
For years, he wanted to make a film about a prison, but hesitated. There was a reason for the way he acted when he explained what had happened to him. Sometimes, people didn’t want to hear it. There were friends who rolled their eyes. They said: ‘Do you want to be praised for being in prison?’ I used to tell them: ‘You don’t know what happened in there.'” It left him alone. I thought I might as well keep quiet.
Now, he has written and directed the fictional drama Roya – a documentary about himself and his experiences in prison. It’s a scary watch, but not a cartoon. He said: “I was very ashamed.” The film tells the story of a university professor, Roya, played by Melisa Sözen, who is Turkish (“I don’t want an Iranian to risk his life for a film,” says Mohammadi). Roya is accused of encouraging his students to burn mascara on their heads. Like Mohammadi in 2011, he was held for months in a small, windowless cell in the notorious Evin prison and tortured. The light is always on. It is impossible to tell whether it is day or night.
It is an unsettling, experimental, visual film with a sense of nightmare. For the first 20 minutes or so it is shot entirely from Roya’s point of view. As the female guard takes him out of his room for questioning, the audience sits on the floor of the living room with Roya – blindfolded, unable to see more than his feet as he is held awkwardly on the balcony. Too much is dangerous. The sight of blood smeared on the carrier’s buttons; a prisoner asks the guards to bring his newborn baby to breastfeed. The sound design of the beat. I looked away with my hands over my ears. All the while, Roya didn’t say a word.
In the second part of the film, he is free, released for three days on a charity trip. Or, that’s how it seems at first. But after months of torture and solitary confinement, it’s hard to know what’s real. Like Roya, we can’t be sure of anything.
The film begins with Roya reading the writings on the walls of his prison, following them with his finger. The details are historical: “It helped me overcome my isolation,” he says. “Then one day, I stole a pen from my interviewer and started writing to another woman – ‘I was here. Now I’m not. You won’t last forever. I’m gone. You will be empty. Don’t worry.'” After some time, when he was released, he met a woman who was locked in the same room later: “She came to me and said, Mahnaz, you saved my life!
Mohammadi talks about his stint in prison. One day when he asked him, he was told that his father had died. He was told he was dead, and he was arrested. “They tortured both of us at the same time,” she whispers, tears welling up in her eyes. I felt so guilty that I thought I should kill myself because when I get out, how can I look after my family?”
How did prison change him? “I am not the same. Mahnaz who went to prison was a different person. After his release, he spent almost two years at home, not seeing anyone, supported by a few friends – “mainly women. I used to cook for them. I’m a good cook.” The prison broke his faith, he explains. While being questioned, Mohammadi heard that his friends and colleagues had introduced him; he sang songs.
Banned from making films since he released the film in 2019, Son-Mother, Mohammadi is not the only Iranian director who has risked everything to continue working. Earlier this month, Tehran’s transitional court upheld a one-year prison sentence Oscar-nominated Jafar Panahi on charges of making lies against the country of Iran. Mohammad Rasoulof fled to Germany in 2024 after being sentenced to eight years in prison and flogged for directing his film. The Seed of the Holy Fig.
Mohammadi defied the government to make Roya, shooting pictures abroad in Iran without the permission of the government. They don’t like to discuss their operations, fearing it could put their colleagues in Iran at risk of arrest. Prison pictures in Tbilisi, Georgia. She is used to working under restrictions, fighting for everything: “I don’t think about limits. As a woman, from the moment you are born, they put a scarf on your hair. And they don’t just put a scarf on our head. They put limits on our way of thinking. That’s why I don’t think about limits and research. I just think about what I can do.”
Does it sound like broadcasting, making a film like Roya? “You feel naked,” he says. “But there are many people inside Iran who are still in prison. Until the last one is there, I will do everything I can. I can’t do big things, but I can do small things, like making movies.” She recently directed the disturbing documentary, Beyond the Lies, about the atrocities that the government banned in November 2019. Her current work is a documentary with Channel 4 about women in Iran.
Mohammadi grew up in a traditional, middle-class family. All sides of his family are teachers and university professors; uncle is a poet. He said: “Books have been my best friends since I was a child.”
His father, a businessman, played a major role in his life. When he got out of prison for the first time, he was welcomed home with open arms. “He said to me, amazing Mahnazi, now you are my son. I was lucky to have such a father, because when some people come out of prison, their families reject them. If I survive, it is because I was lucky to have such a father.”
He tasted independence early. At the age of 15, Mohammadi won a news contest on a children’s radio station and was offered a job. For four years, he wrote the program’s newsletter, going to the station every morning before school. He also said that he should try to become a journalist, but that would require wearing a chador. He politely declined.
Working as a teenager changed his life. He said: “You can’t imagine that it gave me confidence. With the money he saved, when he was 18 years old he moved away from home and lived alone in Tehran. “Everyone was very surprised. ‘You have a family!
At university, he studied psychology, then got a job at a film company. Did he always want to lead? “No. I wanted to write books, not novels.” Then, on the Persian New Year, she volunteered at a homeless shelter with her friends. She continued to tour and eventually made her first documentary, Women Without Shadows, about a shelter, shot in five days and released in 2003.
Now, after all, does he see his future in Iran? “Yes, I’m coming back. I’m not a refugee from Europe. My visa is for three years.” But he was able to seek refuge, I say. “Yes, but I am not just a film maker, but for many years I have been fighting for women’s rights.”
He continued: “My mother asked me: “Mahnaz, why can’t I see you? I will tell them: ‘Mother, imagine that I am a soldier, but I don’t have a gun; I have a pen and I have a camera.’”
Do they hope for the future in Iran, that the government will be overthrown? Mohammadi nodded. “A few days ago I heard from one of my students: ‘Don’t worry Mahnaz, we are gaining strength from the last attack. The new generation has a great desire to get rid of them. It will happen. The Islamic world is finished.’
