Feature: Iranian voices
As the war with Iran rages on, it is important not to reduce it to its regime or to geopolitical logic alone. The two texts brought together here give voice to Iranian women already featured in K.: filmmaker Mahnaz Mohammadi, who recounts her experience of prison and the violence of power, and poet Atefe Asadi, now in exile, who describes the isolation and fatigue of a society that has faced decades of repression. Two voices from within and from exile.
“The whole of Iran is a prison”
Interview with Mahnaz Mohammadi
On the occasion of the premiere of her latest film Roya at the Berlinale, Mariam Schaghaghi interviewed Iranian filmmaker Mahnaz Mohammadi for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung about the long resistance of the Iranian people and the massacres of protesters in January. K. publishes the translation of this interview, in which Mohammadi discusses her experience of imprisonment, the gap between the reality of Iran and Western perceptions, and the dignity of a people who refuse to give up their dreams of freedom.
Atefe Asadi : “We, the people of Iran, have always been alone”
From the Iran-Iraq War to the bloody suppression of uprisings, to the current war, which has buried the Mullahs’ nuclear hopes, the memory of violence runs through an entire generation of Iranians. Iranian poet Atefe Asadi, now a refugee in Germany, shared her story with us. She questions the ethics of states faced with a criminal regime that has gone unpunished for decades. Between traumatic memories, lucid anger, and unyielding hope, she paints a portrait of an abandoned people. She looks back on the bloody repression, the lost illusions, and the ongoing war—and yet continues to dream of a free Iran.
