Challenges in Iranian Filmmaking and Surveillance

... and set a really good mood.

July 2022, on the sidelines of one of the festivals.

The director talks about the difficulties of making his work.

Its main difficulty was how we were going to find the location.

We searched all the coasts of Iran to find a pristine beach.

But in this case, filmmaking is just a cover.

The main point is filling the archives of

foreign networks.

The BBC also mostly did this kind of archival work.

Meaning, for example,

the very images they wanted because their archive was almost empty...

And the name and tools of filmmaking paved the way for filming.

Sometimes they wanted interviews from us.

For example, they would ask what people's opinion was about such- and- such.

We would go and clearly film the entrances of places, people's comings and goings.

He would get a small handycam that had a high zoom.

Maybe that's why the best excuse is finding a location for making a film.

I headed to different cities.

Qom, Arak, Isfahan, Shiraz, Bushehr…

Since 2018, depending on the events in the country,

a new chapter of projects would begin.

At first, it was 20 minutes, then 25 minutes, and we even reached 40 minutes.

For example, we had topics like traffic, electricity, for instance,

Water and power outages.

When the power went out,

we would shoot footage of the lights going off, for example.

For instance, they would use these images in the news broadcasts.

Or they would overlay them on footage they had taken from us,

like of goods, of the high prices of goods.

The climax of the film takes place during the war days.

A live broadcast from inside Tehran. I started filming.

People would come, they would take videos,

take photos, And I would take my videos too.

For example, I would stand here, or I was in the car here…

But during all these years, the director and the crew,

who were paid depending on the project, didn't think they were all caught in

a long- term intelligence trap.

We kept this gang under constant surveillance.

The targets who went into the

streets and alleys that had been hit, them, and the buildings that had been hit,

we monitored through security cameras.

Monitoring until all members, both inside and outside the country, are arrested.

Now, the arrest of these three members

is only the beginning of arresting various members and closing an eight-

year- old case by the FARAJA Public Security Police.

Saeid Yaghini, IRIB News Agency.