Film | GERMANY – IRAN
The Challenge of Portraying Injustice with Little Visual Material Available
The events of the 2009 Iranian election are horrible abominations of the human condition: brutality, murder, torture and rape. It is easy to see why the Iranian government does not allow reporters to record events, but the victims deserve justice and the world needs to be aware of the Iranian government’s actions.
How then could the ferocity of the events be portrayed if there are few pictures or video of the calamity? It was obvious that there should be interviews with exiled Iranians and human rights activists that are able to assess the events in Iran. It was also clear that the first-hand videos, which often had been recorded only with photo cameras or cell phones, should be used. But how can one visualize the atmosphere of an awakening revolution and its failure on the screen? And how can one illustrate the disturbing reports about raids at night, abductions and torture when, of course, no pictures exist?
Last but not least, it was these questions that the team of the full- length documentary film THE GREEN WAVE had to face. However, the answers lay in the nature of the Green Movement itself, the first revolution whose most important communication network was and is the internet. Blogs, networks, YouTube channels and Twitter messages provided the clearest picture of the Green Wave in Iran, and it was crucial to find a visually exciting way to bring these contents onto the screen. In preparation for developing the film, hundreds of internet blog entries and videos from Iran were reviewed and assessed, and soon it became clear that a reenactment of the atrocities for the camera was impossible.
Therefore, with the help of animation artist Ali Soozandeh, the idea of developing a moving comic book, a motion-style comic book, came to light. This stylized and emotional illustration of blog entries and other firsthand experiences allowed a reenactment of these impressions, and at the same time, the alienation-rich form created a contrast to the frighteningly real video recordings also used in the film.
Yet during research and development, it quickly became apparent that a small documentary film budget would not be sufficient for such hard animation work and for the immense time pressure. But the film’s fruition was in the stars: Ali Samadi Ahadi and Oliver Stoltz could no longer produce a documentary about drugs in Iran because of their Iranian exile status, freeing up time and money for the new production.
Ali Samadi Ahadi and Oliver Stoltz’s commissioning editor in charge, Sabine Rollberg (WDR/Arte), saw the need for the Green Movement film, and the WDR (Mathias Werth and Sabine Bohland) joined forces. In the end, it is thanks to the uncomplicated and spontaneous willingness of the federal funding organizations (Filmstiftung NRW, MFG Baden-Württemberg and Nordmedia) and of the two commissioning editors that this film could be financed and produced in record time (less than a year).
After research, 15 blogs were selected and interwoven into the experience and the thoughts of two fictional characters, Azandeh and Kaveh. Certainly the most well-known actors of Iranian descent in Germany, the two young actors Pegah Ferydoni (as Azandeh) and Navid Akhavan (as Kaveh) lent these two fictional students their bodies, their faces and their voices.
As production continued, a team of ten artists, under the direction of artist Ali Reza Darvish, created and colorized 4,000 single images, which were then brought to life by more than 20 animation artists from Cologne, Hannover, Berlin and Ludwigsburg. These 20 artists worked furiously under the direction of Sina Mostafawy from the Cologne-based agency RMH new media.
In the meantime, interviews with exiled Iranians--for example, with the Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi or the young journalist Mitra Khalatbari--were filmed in Cologne, Berlin and Geneva. Editors Barbara Toennishen and Andreas Menn collaborated to join the filmed interviews, the archive video material and the single animated scenes to create a highly emotional collage that reflects the desire for more freedom in Iran as well as the bloody and bitter reality of a cruel rogue regime.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80