She was 19 years old when she left her home, her family and her country, Iran, to realize the dream she had in mind since she was forced to wear the veil (hijab) at the age eight years to get out. street: live in freedom.
Seven years have passed since this young Iranian woman, full of fears and hopes, arrived in Asturias to be herself. María is not her real name, but that is how we will refer to this filmmaker who, without mincing her words, recounts life in Iran since a totalitarian regime, that of the ayatollahs, stole their freedom.
She speaks openly, but her family remains in Iran and acknowledges that they are not yet ready for the regime to ban her from entering their country because it would mean never seeing them again. This is why María jealously guards her anonymity for the moment.
At 26, he managed to realize one of his dreams by studying cinema, and although he is dedicated to social intervention, his audiovisual training means that his professional goal is to be able to tell stories through lens of a camera. For the moment, she is not on a bad path since María presents her first co-film on the occasion of the 62nd edition of the Xixón International Film Festival (FICX), which begins on Friday, November 15.
María’s first contact with the oppressive reality that would reign during the years she remained in Iran took place when, at seven years old, “I was given a veil that was heavier than me and that I would have to wear every time that I was going out into the street.”
He says that at school, the atmosphere was one of war and permanent hatred, “you are instilled with hatred of Israel, hatred of the United States, the regime is at constant war against the whole world “, he remembers. It was from that moment that he realized everything he could not and would never be able to do in his country and that is why he decided to direct his life towards emigration to become the one he wanted to be. “It was years of preparation for a trip, the trip of my life.”
The choice of the destination country was not easy because the knowledge of Iran from the outside world is very limited. When she was little, she believed that complete happiness was achieved by arriving in New York, she admits with a smile, but at sixteen she began to know a little about Europe and that’s when that she decided this would be the destination of her trip.
I was born and raised in a constant state of fear. If you want to stop living in fear, you have to get out of it. The woman’s body is the diet’s battlefield
Obtaining the visa was not easy, she remembers, in fact the first time, she was refused, as were three of her four sisters, who therefore continue to live in Iran “a life that they did not have.” not chosen.” María’s family is completed by a brother, her mother, her father and another sister who also managed to leave Iran.
She knows that she was born and raised in a constant state of fear, which is why the girls know from the beginning, just like their fathers and mothers, that the only way out for them is to leave the country, an enslaved country by a regime for which “the woman’s body is her battlefield”.
Woman, life, freedom
The assassination of Masha Amini, the young Iranian woman who died in detention for wearing her veil incorrectly, in 2022, marked a before and after for María, who was in Iran because she had gone to visit her family. At Amini’s funeral in Kurdistan, a man started screaming Woman, life, freedoma slogan that crossed Iranian borders from Syria and was institutionalized as a two-year-old cry.
Although for María the assassination of Marsha Amini was the turning point that explains the end of the silence of women in Iran, she herself says that we have to look back five years, to 2017, to understand the beginning of the first public movements of women. , when a young woman arrives in a square in Tehran, covered in a white veil, she removes her hijab and waves it in the air, as a sign of protest against the imposition of the compulsory wearing of the veil, giving rise to following #WhiteWednesday or white Wednesdays.
On Wednesday, demonstrations during which dozens of women gathered in the squares of the Iranian capital and uncovered their heads, triggering a real revolt which ended in thousands of arrests and even executions.
María defends that religion cannot in any way define who a person is since it is something that must remain in the sphere of private life. Consider that the veil or the hijab is not framed in the cultural sphere, but rather in the religious sphere, but despite the fact that “the origin is bad”, we must stop questioning the women who wear it and not ask them why they wear it. . TO DO.
When I walk in the street and come across the police, I put my hand on my head in the gesture of putting on my veil. You think you’re done with it, but your body isn’t.
She herself describes how her arrival in Spain took place, where she thought that the feeling of freedom would invade her from the first moment, even if it was not the case. In fact, he remembers walking down the street with a strange feeling of fear whose origin he couldn’t explain. “When I walk in the street and I come across the police, I put my hand on my head in the gesture of putting on my veil. You think you’re over it, but your body isn’t,” he admits.
This is why it is so important, according to her, not to question women who, outside Iran, continue to wear their heads covered. Everyone’s time is very personal, it is very important not to question yourself, explains María.
Even though she is not ready to talk about Iran and tell her story openly, and she knows that this moment will eventually come sooner rather than later, the Iranian filmmaker continues to bring closer the situation of women in Iran everywhere where she is going, because she believes it is the least we can do for all the women left in the country, many of whom are imprisoned.
“If someone had told me seven years ago that I would be telling you all this today, I wouldn’t have believed them. I know I will eventually speak out,” he admits.
From Amnesty International Asturias, its president, Gonzalo Fernández-Corugedo, explains that the situation in Iran presents particularities similar to that of Afghanistan, since they are two countries “linked” for having established in their legislation discrimination based on sex.
It is for this reason that there is a growing trend of jurists who, alongside Amnesty International, demand the inclusion of gender apartheid as a crime under international law, with the aim of intensifying the efforts in the fight against institutionalized regimes of systematic oppression and domination, imposed for gender reasons. Two of the most significant examples of these regimes are the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Ayatollahs in Iran.
The concept of gender apartheid was first formulated by Afghan women’s human rights defenders in the 1990s, in response to the subjugation of women and girls by the Taliban, and its use has expanded when the latter regained power in 2021. Several Iranian feminists have also argued that this is the case. gender discrimination in the Islamic Republic of Iran also constitutes gender apartheid.
In this way, there is an international campaign in which movements like Amnesty International, according to Fernández-Corugedo, or the United Nations itself, demand global recognition of gender apartheid in international legislation as a crime against humanity, to fully extend legal protection. to women, girls and LGTBIQ people.
The situation in Iran continues to worsen with the development of the bill to support chastity and the wearing of hijab, with which, as the president of Amnesty in Asturias says, the State will increase its oppressive response to towards women who do not wear the hijab. .
“I don’t have a crystal ball,” María responds about Iran’s future, but she is clear that what the people have already advanced, regardless of what happens to the regime, says -she, there is no going back. The movement Woman, life, freedom This is already part of the history of a country whose women have been able to rise publicly, even at the cost of their lives. María’s wish is simple: when she says she comes from Iran, she thinks of a country that aspires to life and not destruction.
