Born in Evin

Director and actor Maryam Zaree seeks to shed light on the circumstances of her own birth in Evin, one of Iran’s most notorious prisons for dissidents. Forty years ago, the Shah, and the Iranian monarchy with him, was overthrown. After gaining power, Ayatollah Khomeini, the new head of state and religious leader, had tens of thousands of political opponents arrested and tortured, including the filmmaker’s parents. The family, that was later able to flee to Germany, has never discussed this period of their lives in detail. After years of hesitation, Maryam Zaree finally decides to address the decades of silence: how did their trauma as a result of persecution and violence inscribe itself in the bodies and souls of the survivors and their children? How do survivors cope on a personal level with the fact that the perpetrators still enjoy positions of power with impunity? And what does it mean politically when one of the parties involved tries to cut through the dense undergrowth of repression that exists amongst the closest members of her family? (Berlinale)