Interview with
Rakhshan Bani-Etemad
by Alissa Simon
Iranian writer-director Rakhshan Bani-Etemad is probably Iran's best known and certainly most prolific female filmmaker. She began her career making documentaries for television and her features are steeped in research on Iran's economic and social problems. (A number of her films are available through Facets for sale or rental including the features Nargess, The May Lady and Under the Skin of the City and the documentary Our Times.)
Her most recent feature, Gilaneh, made its international premiere at the 2005 Tribeca Film Festival in April and will screen at the upcoming Toronto International Film festival in September. It's a powerful reflection on war starring popular actress Fatemeh Motamed-Arya as an extraordinarily resolute matriarch.
The film, co-directed with Mohsen Abdolvahab, is a diptych that begins in the countryside on Iranian New Year, 1988. As Saddam Hussein's bombs fall on Tehran, Gilaneh's handsome son Ishmael prepares to leave for the front. At the same time, her headstrong daughter tries to return to the capital to find her deserter husband. In the second part, set in 2003, American forces blast Baghdad while a care-worn Gilaneh nurses her son, now a helpless invalid.
Although films about the Iran-Iraq war take a special place in Iranian cinema history, Bani-Etemad is the first female director to explicitly deal with this subject. "I have never believed that tackling a certain problem is specifically a man's or a woman's job," she says. "War has caused disaster all over the world in all times. Although it is men who fight the wars, the catastrophe of it is devastating for women for years to come. Wives, mothers and daughters of those men who either get killed, be handicapped or disappeared in battlefields must bear and carry the pain and agony of the war till the day they die."
Atypically for Bani-Etemad, Gilaneh evolved from a short into a feature. When she was invited to participate in Tales of a Warring City, a three-part omnibus on the theme of war, she agreed if her episode could come from her own script. When the project screened at Iran's Fajr Film Festival in 2004, Bani-Etemad won a special jury prize, and the Sacred Defense Cinema Association honored her and Motamed-Arya. Her episode, "Nanny Gilaneh," now forms the latter half of the feature film.
Actress "Simin" Motamed-Arya, an intensely engaging presence, whose large darkly shadowed eyes shine with intelligence whether she is expressing pain, indignation or astonishment, first worked with Bani-Etemad on The Blue Veiled, a melodramatic tale of a socially unacceptable love affair. Gilaneh marks the first role where she plays older than her true age. She gives the part enormous vitality, making Gilaneh a force of nature. Bani-Etemad comments, "As for Simin I was pretty sure that despite of her young age she is very much capable of performing the part. Although I do not like heavy make-ups yet I went for it because of the actress's deep belief in her role and Simin could make it by rehearsing the part and by observing many examples of those mothers who take care of their handicapped sons all by themselves and I should admit she did a very good job."
Like some of Bani-Etemad's earlier films, Gilaneh provides a focus on mothers and their complex relationships with their children, one that is both universal and particular. According to her, "The life of an Iranian woman is tightly attached to her children's lives and one cannot possibly tackle her life without considering her role as a mother."
Speaking of motherhood, another of Bani-Etemad's contributions to Iranian cinema is her daughter, teen actress Baran Kosari who plays Gilaneh's pregnant daughter. "Baran was only five when she first played in a film," Bani-Etemad recalls. "In my films Nargess, The Blue Veiled and The May Lady she played small parts and later she performed not only in Under the Skin of the City and Gilaneh but also in other filmmakers' movies as a professional actress. When she was a little girl she wanted to be an astronaut but later she changed her mind and decided to study art. When we are working together, we both forget our relationship as mother and daughter. Baran has been with me behind the scenes in most of my films and therefore she knows my way of working better than any other actor."
Bani-Etemad is at currently at work on a new script. However, she says, "I prefer not to talk about it before you see it; may be sometimes next year..."