No One Sleeps by Iranian director Sam Kalantari offers a rare glimpse into the daily lives of ordinary people in Iran and simultaneously delivers a strong, universal political message. Chronicling an extreme #mountaineering endeavour, the ascent on the highest peak in Iran and Western Asia, #Damavand, a 5609-meter-high sleeping volcano outside #Tehran, convincingly proves that the process of empowering women in a society has a universal, timely meaning.
The world outside
To live in a world not of our own making, the predicament common to all human beings, is getting more challenging from one day to another. Wars, #injustice, #genocide, and silencing of critical voices on the one hand, and on the other, the awareness that our means to at least try to stop all these are equal to null. As this gap increases, the vast majority has turned to the ephemeral and the appearances, from the images on #social media# to the power of influencers. Even identity politics itself seems a convenient solution to this basic predicament, in the sense that people, having no influence on the world they were born into, have instead focused on cultivating the particularities of their own identities. But not #Negar Sammaknejad#, the protagonist of No One Sleeps.
She is a university professor with a PhD in Cognitive Sciences, an ultra-trail runner, and a long-distance running coach. As a child, she invented all kinds of sounds to send the burglars away when alone at home. Now, at forty years old, she is reinforcing her physical abilities to overcome material challenges, including the seemingly impossible one, the ascent on Damavand. Doing two full-time jobs, she hardly has time for her personal life. Her family, colleagues, and friends appear in the film with testimonies of their support and admiration. The film crew carefully follows her while running, training, and planning the ascent.
Mount Damavand, Asia’s highest volcano located on the outskirts of Tehran, has a special place in #Persian myths and legends. It is the symbol of Iranian resistance against #despotism and foreign rule in Persian poetry and literature. It is depicted on the reverse of the Iranian 10.000 rial banknote. It is also a serious mountain climbing challenge. One type of climbing suitable for this volcano is «continuous climbing» from four main fronts. This type of climbing has always been a difficult yet exciting challenge for mountaineers. Prior to the making of this film, no woman has ever succeeded in continuously climbing from four fronts to the summit of Damavand.
Wars, injustice, genocide, and silencing of critical voices on the one hand, and on the other, the awareness that our means to at least try to stop all these are equal to null.
Empowering women
In this carefully planned and precisely structured documentary, Kalantari made its viewers witness the event that forever changed these statistics. In 40 hours, 58 minutes, and 34 seconds, under the snowstorms and frigid temperatures that reached minus 17 degrees Celsius, Negar Sammaknejad made a continuous ascent from four fronts to the summit of Mount Damavand as the first woman ever.
During the project preparations, the Zarrin Roya Company, a group of women from Tehran, active in empowering women in Iran, approached Negar with the proposal to become their voice and face. Her endeavour, they explained, perfectly meets their goal of making women believe in themselves and what they want to achieve. She accepted, modestly. «Being the first at something doesn’t mean anything special per se,» she explained. «But this might create a sparkle in other people’s minds as well. It might inspire other people to move towards goals that others might consider impossible.»
You know what you are doing
Negar herself is also wondering about her motivation. Her answer to whether she is happy with where she stands in life at that moment remains ambiguous because, parallel to her success in mountaineering, she lost her job at university. About her motivation, on the contrary, she leaves no doubt. From the very start, she is convinced that it is the merit of her late father, who never told her what to do or not to do. «You know what you are doing,» he used to say. These words became part of the lyrics of the main song in the film’s soundtrack, composed by #Saba Nedaei#. Thus, everything is put in its place. The softly sung poem about the father’s love praises absolute freedom as the condition for outstanding achievements. The idea that might sound irrational or even controversial is made perfectly credible, ordinary even. Just like the protagonist, Negar Sammaknejad herself is an outstanding personality who is living a perfectly normal life—a courageous woman showing the way forward.
