- Thursday, March 06, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
Mahnaz Mohammadi, a much talked-about filmmaker from Iran, recently earned the headlines in India after she sent a piece of her hair to a film festival held in the southern state of Kerala, the BBC reported.
The 47-year-old could not travel to India last week to receive the Spirit of Cinema award at the International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK). Mahnaz, who is an outspoken critic of the Iranian government, was not able to renew her passport which is set to expire in another three months.
The award was received by Athina Rachel Tsangiri, a Greek filmmaker and a jury at the IFFK, at an event held in Thiruvananthapuram, the capital of Kerala, on Friday (9) and while doing it, she displayed the lock of Mohammadi’s hair which the audience applauded, the BBC report added.
The award was introduced last year to felicitate filmmakers “whose passion for cinema is unflinchingly carried forward in spite of the adversaries faced by them”.
“Cut hair is the symbol of the tragedy that we face every day and every moment,” Mohammadi told the BBC over email, adding that she “could not stop crying” after seeing the response she received at the Indian film festival.
Iranian women have been protesting for months against the stringent hijab laws that ask them to wear a headscarf and loose-fitting clothing to disguise their figures in public.
The protests started after the death of Mahsa Amini, a Kurdish woman from the western city of Saqqez, in September. She went to coma after being detained by morality police in Tehran for allegedly flouting the hijab law.
Since then, Iranian women have only escalated their protests by burning their hijabs on bonfires and women from around the world have also posted videos of themselves cutting their hair in solidarity with the protesters.
According to Mohammadi, the protests were an extension of Iranian women’s right to live with freedom.
“The protesters have nothing to lose. They are fighting with their own lives because the totalitarian government has left them with no alternative,” she said.
Born in Tehran, Mohammadi has been a prominent voice for women’s rights in Iran for the last two decades.
Her debut documentary Women Without Shadows (2003) was on the lives of homeless and abandoned women in a state-run shelter and it has won several awards at international film festivals.
Her 2019 feature film Son Mother, which was premiered at the 44th Toronto International Film Festival in Canada, bagged the special jury award at the 14th Rome Film Fest.
In 2008, the Iranian government banned Mohammadi from travelling following the release of her documentary Travelogue.
It was shot on a train between Tehran and Ankara, Turkey, and documented why so many Iranians were fleeing the country.
