‘My Favourite Cake’
©Hamid-Janipour
Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha won’t be coming to Berlin. The Iranian directors, whose feature Ballad of a White Cow received a rapturous reception here in 2020, were set to attend the 74th Berlinale with their latest competition entry, My Favourite Cake.
“But then the police came, took our passports and told us were banned from traveling,” says Moghaddam, speaking to The Hollywood Reporter via Zoom from the couple’s home in Tehran. “We are now facing a court case because of the film.”
The Berlinale has called on Iran to release the directors, saying it was “shocked and dismayed” to hear of the couple’s fate.
My Favourite Cake follows 70-year-old Mahin (Ballad of a White Cow actress Lili Farhadpour) who, after decades of living alone, decides to revive her love life. On a whim, she propositions Faramarz, a solidarity cab driver (Esmaeel Mehrabi), and invites him to her house. A gentle love story about loneliness, aging, and embracing life, the film “crossed several red lines” for the government censors, says Sanaeeha, including showing Mahin without a hijab.
My Favourite Cake has its world premiere in Berlin on Friday. Totem Films is handling world sales.
First off, how are you, what’s your current situation with the Iranian government?
Behtash Sanaeeha Well, our passports have been confiscated and we are facing a court case. Actually, it all started almost six months ago when security guards raided our editor’s home office and took all the computers, all the hard drives, everything. Then they called us and informed us about the court case. When we wanted to leave Iran to Paris to finish the post-production on the film, they took our passports and said the court case is still ongoing so we can’t leave the country.
They are not happy with the film.
Maryam Moghadam We have crossed several red lines which normally would be censored, we are showing things that never get shown in Iranian cinema. Like women not wearing their hijab at home, which is forbidden, but it’s a lie, because no one wears the hijab at home. And other things, like showing a woman dancing and drinking. Our film is about a woman who wants to have a normal life, to live and enjoy her life. But just to be a woman is forbidden in Iran. And enjoying life? Forget it.
Did the decision surprise you?
Maryam Moghadam No it doesn’t surprise us. Censorship is very tight now. There have always been red lines in Iran but it’s been getting worse. It’s getting tighter and tighter and it sometimes hurts, but it’s not surprising.
Behtash Sanaeeha Actually, we had these kinds of experiences before with our last film, Ballad of a White Cow (2020), which is still banned, four years later. We had a long court case with that, over two years. But that’s finished now. This is a new case. And because of how we showed the woman in this film, the authorities pushed us to stop the film, they pushed us to not submit the film to Berlin, or any other festivals.
Maryam Moghadam They called us a few times and tried to make us write a letter to the Berlinale to ask them to take the film out of competition. But we didn’t, of course.
How have conditions for women, and for artists, changed since the mass demonstrations in Iran in 2022 and 2023?
Maryam Moghadam It’s very different. Many artists and people have moved out of the country, moved abroad. But people in Iran still have hope. What choice do we have? We have to keep our hope. And the most hopeful thing that has happened is that while the rules are more strict now —they are arresting women, arresting everyone —when you go into the streets, you see more and more women without the headscarf, without the hijab. I don’t think artists have much hope left. Most have left the country. But when it comes to the women, they are still existing and they are tough. So that gives us hope.
Behtash Sanaeeha This is not something Iranian women can chip away in one day or two, or in a couple of weeks. This is something that can only happen gradually as we rise and demand our rights back.
Why did you want to tell this story, of a 70-year-old woman living alone who tries to rekindle her love life?
Maryam Moghadam A big part of it comes from our interest in this character, in her isolation. This sort of story, of elderly women of this type, hasn’t been told, really anywhere in the world. They are unseen. When you pass your 50s, especially as a woman, especially if you are not stereotypically “attractive” —we think she is beautiful— you become invisible. We just liked this character and we thought she has stories to tell that we hadn’t seen before. All these young women who are out in the streets now, who are very brave and fighting, also have great stories to tell and we hope we can tell them someday. But Mahin’s story was like an unopened box that had been sitting in the house for 45 years. We wanted to open it.
How did you cast Lili Farhadpour as Mahin?
Behtash Sanaeeha When we were writing the script, we were always thinking about Lili. She had a small role in our last thing, Ballad of a White Cow, and she is a close friend of ours. We knew that she had the potential for the role. And she’s very brave to do it. There are not many Iranian actresses who would be ready to perform without a hijab, to dance, and drink on screen. They’d be afraid to. But when Lily read the script, she came back to us and she said it was brilliant and she wanted to play the role. We told her it could have serious consequences for everyone involved, including her, but she said she was absolutely ready for it.
Mahin is of the generation of Iranian women who remember life before the revolution. Is there a danger with that generation dying out, that the memories of the time before will be forgotten?
Behtash Sanaeeha Iranian woman have not changed how they live their lives since the revolution. They still don’t wear the hijab inside the house, they still drink alcohol, they still dance, and they still have parties. The problem is that the filmmakers, the artists, cannot show women like this. How Iranian women have to show themselves outside the house is not the reality of Iranian women. Iranian women are still living the same way they did before the revolution. But there is no way, no medium, to show the lives they live inside their own homes. Mahin in the film is not deciding to return to the way she lived before the revolution, she is deciding to live in the normal way Iranian women live today.
Maryam Moghadam There was a threat, 20 years ago, that the memories of the time before the revolution might disappear, but with the Internet revolution, and social media, it will never be forgotten. Memories are everywhere, they are being told by everyone. We are telling those memories, with Mahin. Someone else tells it through an Instagram story. Another makes a film. It just grows and grows. I think the memories are more awake than ever before. Young people know more about what happened before the revolution than I did when I was in my 20s.
The Berlinale has come out in support of you and called on the Iranian government to let you leave the country. Does this sort of international solidarity make a difference?
Behtash Sanaeeha It helps us because we feel we are not alone and we get more confidence with this support. But it seems there was no change with the government, they didn’t change their decision after the Berlinale statement, or the one from (authors’ association) PEN to release us.
Maryam Moghadam I think it has had an effect. When it comes to all kinds of political cases in Iran, if you have international support, you are more safe. It doesn’t mean they set you free, but it gives you a little more safety. I’m sure the fact that we are sitting here at home and not somewhere else has something to do with their support.
Behtash Sanaeeha We don’t know. At any moment they can come and get us.
Maryam Moghadam But they haven’t yet.
Behtash Sanaeeha Fingers crossed.