Travel-Banned Iranian Directors Dedicate ‘My Favourite Cake’ Berlin Premiere To Women At Forefront Of Woman Life Freedom Fight
deadline.comIranian filmmakers Behtash Sanaeeha and Maryam Moghadam’s new feature My Favourite Cake world premieres at the Berlinale on Friday but the directors are not at the festival having been slapped with a travel ban by Iran’s authoritarian Islamic Republic regime.
Their absence was marked at the press conference by two empty seats and a joint portrait, while lead actress Lily Farhadpour, who has been allowed to make the journey, read out a statement on their behalf. “We feel like parents who are forbidden from even looking at their new-born child,” it read. “We’re sad and we’re tired, but we’re not alone.
This is the magic of cinema. Cinema brings us together. It is a window which opens up a time and a place where we can meet.” Their quirky comedy-drama stars Farhadpour as a lonely widow who seizes the moment and invites a taxi driver (Esmail Mehrabi) into her home in a bid to break her solitude.
The film was shot in the early days of the Woman Life Freedom protests, sparked by the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini In September 2022.
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