Berlinale 2026 | Iranian filmmaker-activist Mahnaz Mohammadi: ‘I’m not making political films’

Roya is played by a Turkish actress, not an Iranian actress. Was this done to protect your identity because you made this film in secret?

When I am looking for a character so important to me, it takes a lot of time. I was sure that I did not want to find an Iranian face, which is seen in many Iranian films. Their story is everywhere on the Internet, and they are losing their mystique. While you are watching you are reminded of his personal story before watching the movie. Even for my last film, son-mother (2019), I did not choose any actor’s face. But [Turkish actress] melissa [Sözen] An amazing international actor. After jail, I could not go out for almost two years. Some friends came home. I watched a movie based on one of his suggestions. It was a moment when I was watching [Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s] winter sleep (2014). I saw Melissa’s character in repression. I thought I understood him and I started crying.

For the first 20 minutes, we see the dark, claustrophobic interiors of the prison world from the non-linear perspective of a man named Roya. We see restricted footage of blood on the floor and everything. How did you decide on this format and structure?

For me, it was always, ‘I don’t want to explain [the story]I don’t want to talk about what they did to me. I have to find a way to give the audience a chance to travel with Roya. Roya means dream in Persian. I am inviting the audience to see this dream together, to experience the world of Roya, where reality and unreality merge. Roya’s perception of the past and present cannot be separated, because she does not know what is the certainty of everything, what is the truth. The audience leaves with Roya at the same time. I’m not guiding the audience as to how they should feel. The story is based on the unconscious structure in your dreams. Look at one of your dreams, you will remember some pictures and some noises without any meaning. I wanted to make a film whose ending was not the same as its beginning.

Remembering the time when you were convicted and arrested, have any expectations changed since then?

I am always hopeful. At the time I wrote that [open] In the letter (during the post-election unrest), in 2009, this was exactly my position. I’m a woman, I’m a filmmaker, I’m guilty, but it’s not ‘I’ anymore, it’s ‘we’. And unfortunately, so many countries did not see our pain. They did not hear our voices who are no longer able to work or cope with this system, the Islamic Republic. We simply became part of the property of the system. In 2009, I wrote this, but who listened? nobody. Now ‘I’ became ‘we’. We are guilty. We do not have the right to live in Iran. People inside Iran are struggling for survival. And, I still have hope. During the war everyone was talking about Gaza and now all the leftists are quiet. It means that when people do not follow your ideology, you do not care about them. Just look at Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontiers), they don’t even give a paragraph to all the people who died: doctors, nurses. What does it mean?

Can cinema change anything?

Cinema cannot change anything. Cinema cannot provide justice. Cinema can bring awareness to people’s judgment and when people’s perception changes, then maybe something changes.

Wim Wenders, international jury member at the festival, said that cinema is the antithesis of politics. Politics remains a subtext of Iranian cinema, although its expression has evolved, from speaking through children to direct realism. Can films and politics be separated?

maybe sometimes. Sometimes misunderstandings or misunderstandings will occur. I can tell you, I am not making political films. no way. But I cannot ignore the situation people are living in. Even now in Iran, briefings about going out on the streets after six o’clock have become part of activism, because so many people everywhere are being arrested, in fact simply killed. How can I divide it between this and that. I don’t want to make a film about that, rather I want to make a film on what happened after all that politics suppressed people.

What does it mean to make movies in secret? Jafar Panahi has done it. Now Iran has sentenced him to one year in jail. Do you see cinema as a form of resistance to state restrictions on artists? What would you tell young female filmmakers in Iran about courage?

When you’re working like this, your hands are handcuffed. You are putting people’s lives in danger. It is not easy at all, and you have to be so flexible all the time, ready for any changes, but still, it is the only way to survive. When you have been under oppression for so many years, it was my habit to resist not being a part of those lies. They put me in jail for not allowing me to survive financially and mentally. I was looking for the truth but did not find it, everyone has their own truth. I lived a life of crying, the life I’m showing [in the film]I lived it. This is very familiar to me. If I remain in this situation, how will I retain power? [that be] By removing this statement. When you start to understand, and you have had a good message throughout your life since childhood, to believe in yourself, then you are ready to go on the path of hope. To actually create hope, to live that hope. When I was a child, I would ask, and I was told ‘In the future, you can get through it, build a hope and build a vision.’ In my childhood I used to think, where is hope, maybe when I grow up, I will go and find it, that hope. But in the course of life I learned that it is not so; It’s your way of living and practicing, with cinema you are actually creating hope. I don’t believe love and hope exist, but we can create it.

You are very brave, to keep protesting and to keep showing up. Can you tell us how the time spent in prison and being away from your family while making this film and other projects has changed you psychologically as a person, an artist and how has it influenced your cinema?

Thanks for asking a good question. It’s taking me back to that moment… They changed things for good. You know, while making films for so many years, I was just thinking about how to tell the truth, even though I didn’t believe in the truth. Because I live in a time that changed my perception. I couldn’t believe it. And I was a little shocked. Where is the truth? Can I find it amidst the fear, denial and old repetition? For me, it was a kind of discovery, slowly, line by line, amidst silence, to figure out what was going on. I never thought I was brave, but my dad told me growing up, ‘Don’t listen to them.’ do whatever you want. You’re good. You are great.’ When you hear this from your parents since childhood, they instill in you a will power that no one can break. Maybe, all those years, I was practicing. Every time I broke down, I had to come back and collect my pieces and build a new person again. Life still goes on, we can’t stop. After these two days of carnage, my friend told me, Mehnaz, it would be better for some time, don’t make a film, just write a poem.

What does this say about Iranian society and the status of women? Is hope dead?

In fact, after this massacre I think people have become more inspired for change. I heard that they are saying that they do not believe that the Islamic Republic can see the Persian New Year. Just imagine how hopeful they are, because for them, this act of the Islamic regime of killing their children is the end. It’s all over.

Which film/filmmaker do you keep returning to?

I lost my chance, because I was going to Kerala (International Film Festival of Kerala, IFFK, 2022) to get an award, the Spirit of Cinema Award. And because they were giving a lifetime achievement award [the late Hungarian legend] Bella Tarr, I forced myself to go there because I thought it was the only chance I would have to meet her. And, unfortunately, they did not give me a visa to go there. I lost my chance. [Béla Tarr passed away on January 6, 2026.]