Director and actress Maryam Zaree embarks on a quest to find out the violent circumstances surrounding her own birth in Evin, one of the most notorious political prisons in Iran. It is forty years since the monarchy of the Shah of Iran was toppled. On seizing power, Ayatollah Khomeini, the new religious leader, had tens of thousands of political opponents arrested, persecuted and murdered – including the film-maker’s parents. After managing to flee to Germany, the family never talked about this terrible time in any detail. In her début film, Maryam Zaree, now a successful actress and writer, tackles the decades of family silence and explores her own questions about the circumstances of her birth. How has the trauma inflicted through persecution and violence infiltrated the bodies and souls of both the survivors and their children? How do the victims cope personally with the same perpetrators remaining unpunished and still in power to this day? What does it mean, politically, to face the silence within the family? She meets other survivors, talks to experts and looks for other children born in the same prison at the same time as her. An exciting quest that highlights how the private is political and the political is private. And shows how important collective memory is in order to counteract collective suppression.
The film premiered at the Berlinale 2019, winning the Compass-Perspektive-Award. (SH)

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Preise für ›Born in Evin‹
Kompass-Perspektive-Preis, Berlinale 2019