Ghazal-e Sorkh

Weaving together personal biographies and the national narratives of 1970s Iran, Maryam Tafakory unpicks the intricate, overlapping layers of political repression, censorship, cultural production and literary resistance. Revisiting the 1976 Shiraz Art Festival boycott, banned literature and the West’s shifting responses to Iran, the film exposes the contradictions and hypocrisies of the international powers implicated in these histories. With lyrical precision and incisive irony, this is a meditation on the power of poetry as a vehicle of extraordinary resilience. (Hyun Jin Cho)

This film will be shown as part of the screening Verses From Home.