Film | GERMANY – IRAN
About the Creator of the Green Wave – Ali Samadi Ahadi
It was June 12th, 2009. After having worked very hard for two years, all of us were very much looking forward to the premiere of our comedy SALAMI ALEIKUM. From all over Germany, our colleagues gathered together for the International Film Festival in Emden, where the film would be shown to the public for the first time. On the very same day, my wife and I went to Bonn to submit our voting slip for the presidential elections in Iran. I always felt both Iranian and German. So did my wife. We met in the no-man’s-land of cultures, and in our lives, we tried to bring together the positive aspects of both of the worlds.
On the very same evening, it suddenly became clear that one of those worlds was in flames. Despite SALAMI ALEIKUM being a great success in Emden, our team did not at all feel like celebrating. We felt a kind of petrified. Paralyzed. And this feeling of helplessness was to remain for weeks. Iran was in flames and we could not do anything. Day by day, we were sitting in front of the television for hours, on the phone with each other, one in Vienna, the others in Berlin and Cologne. Silent. We were not in the mood for talking, but then again, did not want to be alone during those hours. We moved together – if only on the phone.
It really took me weeks to get out of this dizziness and to make the decision to do what I do best: (create) a film about the events in Iran in the summer of 2009. But very soon it became clear that we had to find a special narrative style for this because the events behind us left only fragmentary, poor-quality pictures taken with cell phones or images from archives covering the situation only in part.
A reenactment was out of question, especially since it was clear to me that as long as the regime in Iran was in power, I could no longer visit Iran. However, Iran is a nation of bloggers. Thousands of young people write down their feelings, write down what is on their minds in their blogs. If it was no longer possible for me to shoot my film in Iran, to interview the people there, these blogs were exactly the right source to reach the inner voices of the people.
For a long time, Ali Soozandeh and I have been searching for an adequate visual language, and then we came across the so-called motion comic to tell about these blogs. I chose 15 blogs from 1,500 websites, which we then translated into images. We attracted a range of actors like Pegah Ferydoni, Navid Akhavan, Jasmin Tabatabai and Caroline Schreiber. With them, we re-enacted the scenes and took photos.
Alireza Darvish, a wonderful artist, accepted the task of creating the drawings of the characters, and Sina Mostafawy and his team began with the animation of the scenes. Finally, from the archive material, the recently shot interviews, the pictures from cell phones and the animations, Barbara Toennieshen and Andreas Menn composed this collage.
The whole production took ten months. Within these ten months, the concept, the financing, 42 minutes of animations, the editing as well as the sound design, the music and the compositing (was completed).
The time pressure was immense and could only be put up with because everybody plunged into the project and worked day and night. And at the same time, one thing was clear for the team of Iranian descent: Because of their participation in this project, they will never be able to visit Iran again. But as Saadi so nicely said,
“Human beings are members of a whole, In creation of one essence and soul, If one member is afflicted with pain, Other members uneasy will remain. If you’ve no sympathy for human pain, The name of human you cannot retain!“
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