‘Cinema cannot just be about entertainment’

Out of all the forms of world cinema, Indian audiences have identified with Iranian cinema the most, perhaps because its stories could have so easily been shot in India.

However, throughout the 90s, despite directors like Majid Majidi, Jafar Panahi, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Abbas Kiarostami and Bahman Ghobadi championing Irani art-house cinema globally, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad’s propaganda machines made most film-makers flee the country. Since then, the big success stories in Irani cinema have been few and far between.

However, 30-year-old Samira Makhmalbaf, in Mumbai as jury member for the Mumbai Film Festival, is one of the few shining lights in Irani cinema today. Based out of Paris, Samira has made it big early in life, coming from a country where female cineastes are rare. Born in the artistically inclined Makhmalbaf family, at 17, she became the youngest director to participate at the Cannes Film Festival. Two of her films, The Blackboard and At Five in the Afternoon, have won a Jury Prize at Cannes and Palme d’Or nominations.

In a conversation with DNA, Samira described her approach towards her films as ‘focused on simple characters, having a lot of depth’. “Unlike film students, I hadn’t seen many films before I began making them. I was simply determined to tell stories about the people of Iran,” she says, adding, “Art has to have a certain magic in it to appeal to people. Cinema cannot simply be about entertainment. It has to have an underlying message.”

Although commercial film releases in Iran are a thing of the past, Samira says that Iranians do manage to watch films on television or on DVD. “(Under the current government) the people of Iran have been humiliated. They can’t breathe in peace anymore. The best cinematic talent in the country is currently in prison.”

She is one of the few women film-makers to shoot feature films in Afghanistan. “At Five in the Afternoon is about an ambitious woman trying to get education in Afghanistan after the defeat of the Taliban. It was especially difficult to convince an Afghani woman to act. But I was determined I would be able to do it,” she says. “If you’re confident of making something happen, you will be able to do it. One must not let age, gender and social background limit us in being ambitious.”

Samira hasn’t seen any Indian films yet, but will get to see some as jury member at MAMI. She admits she doesn’t enjoy Hollywood films at all. “Hollywood is a bit like McDonald’s. A McDonald’s in any part of the world is a McDonald’s. There’s nothing different about them.”