Iran Upset Over Persepolis Screening

According to the Dominion Post newspaper, the Iranian embassy in New Zealand has blasted the Wellington Film Festival for screening Marjane Satrapi's award-winning film Persepolis.

The animated movie is "full of lies and unreal fantasy," said the embassy of the film. The Iranian government added that Persepolis is "anti-peace and insulting."

"The filmmaker is trying to evoke spectators' emotion through exaggeration (and) by distortion of history, especially Iran's revolution and the role of people in it," they continued.

Film festival director Bill Gosden told the Dominion Post that he didn't believe Persepolis was anti-Iranian, and the festival wasn't trying to insult Iranian values.

"It's certainly not the festival's intention to do so," he said. "We do believe that any filmmaker is entitled to present their view of events, and that every filmgoer should be encouraged to reach their own view of the filmmaker's reliability."

Based on Satrapi's series of graphic novels of the same name, Persepolis follows a middle-class girl as she grows up under the shadow of the Islamist revolution in Iran during the early 1980's. It was co-directed by Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud.

The Wellington Film Festival will screen Persepolis on July 18th, the festival's first day, with three other screenings occurring on July 20th and 22nd.

Iran's Battle With Persepolis

The film first aroused the Iranian government's ire when it won the prestigious Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in May of 2007. Ever since then, Iran has attempted to ban the film from many festivals, succeeding in Bangkok but failing in Ottawa. Iran had initially succeeded in getting Persepolis banned in Lebanon, but a public backlash forced the Lebanese government to reverse its position.

Despite (or perhaps, because of) the controversy, Sony Pictures Classics picked up Persepolis for North American distribution, and the flick eventually earned an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Film.

The Wellington Film Festival, which runs until August 3rd, will also screen Ari Folman's Waltz With Bashir, an autobiographical story of an Israeli soldier who witnesses the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacres. Two Japanese productions, Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone and Vexille, will also be screened during the fest.

Persepolis poster

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