Razeh-del

Cici Peng

Razeh-del, for instance, is about two schoolgirls – myself and my friend Roya – who sent a letter to Iran’s first-ever women’s newspaper, Zan, which ran for less than a year before it was shut down in 1999. There are four parallel stories in the film, but they are repeatedly interrupted. I kept each plotline unfinished so they could merge. To me, they are the same story: that of the erasure of women, not only from Iranian cinema but from society at large. There has always been a war on women. Within the multiple narratives of Razeh-del, our imaginations fill in the gaps of what is not depicted, inventing new stories. Imagination always escapes the rules.