Prior to the function, Sharifi labored as a documentary editor and produced eight quick movies, together with IDFA-winning director Firouzeh Khosrovani’s Family Radiograph.
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Using the essay-like model of a diary, “The Stolen Planet” contrasts Tehran’s systematic repression, utilizing each the director’s private archives and 8mm recordings of the lives of strangers. It expresses pleasure and cheerfulness. The movie is produced by Anke Petersen and Lilian Tietjen of JYOTI Film, and co-produced by Farzad Pak of PakFilm, who additionally directed Mohammad Rasoulof’s Golden Bear Award-winning There Is No Evil. ing. CAT&Docs is dealing with worldwide gross sales for the movie.
In an interview with Variety, Sharifi stated the title metaphor “comes from the double life that we lead in Iran. There’s their planet, and there is our planet. “There is,” he stated.
The filmmaker was born in 1979 on the peak of Iran’s Islamic Revolution, and since then he has heard tales of various societies and totally different lives. The separation between “you” and “them” is what she describes as a state of affairs the place “you might have your values and your relationships, however they’ve a distinct understanding of all this.” is necessary. That’s why they ask us to neglect the previous and create our personal historical past. ” That makes historical past a really controversial idea.
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“My Stolen Planet”
For Iranian ladies and documentarians like Sharifi, the connection between forgetting and remembering is a lifeline that should be maintained. Often such swings are extra noticeable in outdated household photographs and forgotten video archives, which the director considers her “a direct hyperlink to her previous.”
She first labored with archival supplies in movie faculty for her senior thesis documentary, Moon’s Voice, concerning the well-known Iranian singer Gamal ol Moluk Waziri, and has been engaged on it ever since. As she collected and scanned the movie rolls that folks left behind, buried, or tried to burn after the revolution, faces, each recognized and unknown, appeared within the body. At the time, she stated she had no intention of utilizing the footage in any specific movie, describing her emotions as “a type of obligation to protect this historical past.”
Around 2018, she printed a feature-length movie to point out how individuals, confined to the security of their houses, can stay extra freely, dance, and luxuriate in togetherness, similar to in pre-revolutionary occasions. I considered together with a stranger’s archive in my mission. “This was footage from our planet,” she admits.
Sharifi wrote, directed, shot and edited “My Stolen Planet,” and she or he is current all through along with her voice and face. “I used to be at all times behind the digicam at teams, household gatherings, and celebrations,” the director says, sharing that he’s extra comfy as an observer as a result of his behavior of recording every part.
“After some time, I began doing it deliberately as a result of I knew it was crucial to protect these micro-stories. It’s the type of factor we have to report for the long run. It was the historical past of
These micro-history and Sharifi’s private tales are positioned alongside movies of the protests sparked by Martha Amini’s demise in 2022, making this movie a private time capsule for generations to come back. Open to Iranian ladies.
In 2020, Sharifi went to Germany as a part of an artist residency to finish “My Stolen Planet,” ending a tough lower earlier than ladies took to the streets in Iran. However, she knew that with the intention to keep true to each herself and her movie, she wanted to incorporate the most recent developments.
“The predominant thought was nonetheless the identical,” she says. “I talked about ladies’s rights in Iran by way of my private story. Even although the second half of the movie modified, nothing modified.”
The private is political, and this is applicable to Sharifi’s documentary as effectively. She admits, “Every time she talks a few film, she’s like speaking about her life.” She’s attempting to distance herself just a little bit and give it some thought individually, however for some motive she finally ends up speaking about her life. It’s not straightforward. “
Treating the previous and reminiscence as materials implies a type of duality, however in contrast to the separation of personal and public life in Iran, it extends into the long run.
The Stolen Planet is filled with historical past and ladies’s tales, however the director reminds us that archives are additionally tangible reminiscences, with their textures and colours. “It’s not simply concerning the previous or nostalgic. For me, the archive is a way of id, and I like to attach with historical past to not solely discover myself, however to determine myself. Archive is a part of my soul, a part of my physique, and a part of my life.”
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