0In the film a young woman, Maryam, is sentenced to death because of the murder of her husband. She and the daughter of the murdered man are part of a TV show. If she forgave Maryam, Maryam would be able to live. A dramatic show evolves.
While I was a bit nervous at first - having never done anything like that with other „professional“ journalists before - I soon could settle and a really nice and interesting conversation developed.
fGR: Forgiveness is one of the major aspects in your film. Can you tell us about this concept in Iran?
Massoud Bakhshi: Forgiveness itself is really respected. It is something that every religion values highly. However, in Iran forgiveness actually is part of the judiciary system. It means that if the victim decides to forgive the perpetrator, the perpetrator has to come up with the so-called blood money, another traditional aspect of Iranian law, but in exchange is cleared of his/her charges. However, the Iranian civil law is really complicated. Forgiveness can only happen in some cases of murders, where there exist over 80 different cases of. Each case in all its special details and circumstances will be judged differently. Usually, when a murder happens in an accidental fight or within the family, revenge is not an option. According to the current system prosecutor and judge are recommended to first always strive for forgiveness. So, they usually try to make this happen. Generally, these murder cases happen a lot in poorer parts of society. These people often really need the blood money making it more likely that they forgive. However, the perpetrators normally do not have the amount of money needed. Hence, you have these TV shows. The Iranian system is trying to promote this blood money in order to achieve more forgiveness.
I know that in other Golf countries like Saudi Arabia this doesn’t exist. They are a lot harsher and quick to cut hands for violating the law. Iran’s judiciary system, however, is a lot more fluid. It is based on the ones of France and Europe and combined with the Islam.
For the last 20 years, since more and more NGOs have come to Iran, there are a lot of organisations who operate based on this law of forgiveness, because they know it means life or death for the people. Usually, there are a lot of cases of young people, especially tied to street fights. The NGOs are trying to save the lives of these people by going to benevolent rich people asking them for support. With this money they then go to the victim’s family asking for forgiveness.
„Yalda, la nuit du pardon“ is based on an actual show called „Honeymoon“. Can you tell us a little bit about that? How did you include that in your script?
One day, a friend called me and asked me whether I had ever seen this program „Honeymoon“. It was dedicated to the month of Ramadan. They say it is an invitation by god and by participating in fasting you are invited to his party. So, this show capitalises on the concept forgiveness and blood money as I have just described it but it is not limited to murder cases. In fact, the murder cases are the harder ones.
The show I watched evolved around the father of a murdered young man who died in a street fight. Throughout the whole show the host tried to convince the father to forgive the murderer, telling him that these things can happen, recalling how it is to be young. The man looked at the cameras and said: „I cannot forgive him. I want him to be hanged.“ When the show was about to finish you could see the host being highly agitated. He left the stage without saying goodbye, just with the final words: „Watch this show and judge yourself.“
I was shocked. Reading through the millions of comments I saw that most of them were insulting the host saying that he had no right to insist. They said that the father was right to take revenge. That was really scary.
This show was so mediatized about something so sensitive. Usually, the NGOs who do that are really aware of how sensitive this is. If they see that the victim’s family is rejecting the offer they understand and don’t further insist. However, when you bring this into media there is no place for this, you basically have to go for forgiveness, which in most cases also is achieved. They even had some episodes dedicated to people who had already forgiven. They want to show the importance of that virtue to society and promote this culture of forgiveness.
At that time I was working on the idea of a new film evolving around a convicted woman. I had years to spent on that script because my first film was banned from Iran. I didn’t have any certainties about the future and didn’t know if I was ever able to produce this film.
However, after I watched this episode I knew that I wanted to tell my story in the frame of this program and also reduce it to the time span of this show which was 1 1/2 hours. I changed the whole script, which was quite a radical step. It was risky as the film was becoming some kind of theatre or court room drama. However, I knew this was what would make the film interesting in more layers.
From there it took me two additional years to gain enough money for the film. Being blacklisted because of „A Respectable Family“ was not that easy. Also, I did get a lot of negative feedback for that film. (Even though it was blacklisted everyone had watched it illegally.) Even in Cannes I had rich Iranians living in France coming out of the cinema asking me why I had made that film. Which is crazy because they are not even living in Iran so how can they ask me, a person actually living there, that question. So, my personal backstory and struggle with the judiciary system also fed into the whole process of making this film.
Can you elaborate on that? What does forgiveness mean to you?
I feel the way forgiveness was portrayed in the show is not the true meaning of forgiveness. For me it had something very personal. At that time I was really battling with some conservative film makers from Iran openly asking for my head. For two years I was confronted with the question whether I as an individual was able to forgive these people and not to hate them but see them as colleagues.
Can you tell us a bit about the concept of temporary marriage?
Temporary marriage is a traditional marriage contract with a limited duration. It is rooted back to the beginning of Islam because there were so many people. One man could have several women to feed the children. In the big cities in Iran you can rarely see this anymore because the women usually prefer to have a permanent marriage. In the lower classes and in the smaller cities this does still happen due to financial reasons. In any case, the wives cannot inherit from their temporary husband if he dies, but their children can, which is the case in the film.
How will the Iranian society react to this film? Will they understand the criticism behind it if they are so used to this TV show?
Yes, of course. The Iranian society is very conscious. Every year, Iran produces a lot of films, more than a hundred. Out of these one hundred films there are at least two films about the same subject. That is proof that it at least is a question for the elite of the society. Also, the show „Honeymoon“ was stopped quite soon after the premiere of Yalda, so I take this as a sign that they understood my criticism.
I remember when I presented Yalda last year at a national film festival there were at least five films about the blood money and execution. The ministry of justice was quite satisfied, even if some of the films like mine were very critical. However, they see it as a good sign.
So, there is a will to reform. The parliament stopped the execution of more than 6000 cases. Usually, they are about drug dealers and the punishment on dealing drugs is really hard. Most of the times they are right as far as I am concerned as Iran is just on the road between Turkey and Afghanistan. If they didn’t do this, Europe would be full of drugs. However, execution is not a solution for this problem. I don’t know exact statistics but I do know that with that decision of parliament the number of executions was reduced by half.
What influenced your screen writing? Especially in scripting reality TV shows this can be quite hard I imagine? How did you do your research?
Apart from „Honeymoon“ I watched two other shows. However, they didn’t inspire me. I knew from the beginning that it was a melodrama. I knew it was a female story. The women were going to be very emotional, which is normal given the circumstances.
Through an acquaintance I got the permission to go to a hospital were convicted women give birth to their babies. For men it normally is really hard to get in there. They explained me how everything works.
In between I had another version of the story were Maryam escapes the hospital and then gives birth, but I wanted the story to be realistic that’s why I used all research options I had. I also asked my acquaintance to read the script and she told me that of course this was realistic. She once had a women escaping this special hospital only an hour after giving birth through jumping out of the window in handcuffs. These things happen.
So, to answer the question, it was mainly a challenge to put all this backstory I had in this frame and in the unity of time and place.
Do you expect to be getting into trouble with this film again?
No, I don’t think so. I used this special format to make it more interesting and that it would at least be accepted to be screened in Iran. The fact that I presented the film to the national film festival also helped. With my last film it was ready just in time for Cannes, so the premiere was there which offended the Iranian film industry. Of course the way they received the film now was really offensive: they told me it was rubbish. I definitely treat that as a compliment, though. They told me it is a remake of a show, which I also see as a compliment, because it was a big question for me whether the film would work in this format.
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