<em>Rehearsals for a Revolution</em>

Creating a documentary to recall the suffering of the Iranian people in recent history is a culturally valuable undertaking, if only because there is a vast gulf between knowing the facts and witnessing the reality firsthand. Moreover, the regime does everything in its power to prevent news of the suppression of resistance movements from reaching the media. When a documentary is crafted from the intimate perspective of a family history—enriched with family snapshots, archival photos, newspaper clippings, audio recordings, YouTube clips, official TV footage, and letters, all accompanied by personal commentary—the work gains a profound, multi-layered depth. The jury recognised this at the recent Cannes Film Festival, which honoured Pegah Ahangarani’s Rehearsals for a Revolution, her debut feature-length documentary—with its top prize, the L’Œil d’or.

Home movies & state silence

With impressive candour, the filmmaker incorporates her doubts regarding her own film project and its potential significance into the work itself. She reveals moments of disorientation and even openly admits to feelings of guilt.

Early on, she recalls her father, Jamshid Ahangaran, whom she once revered as a hero and a fearless fighter. He had been among the first to volunteer for the front lines of the Iran-Iraq War, a conflict he viewed as a struggle against US hegemonic ambitions. When he returned eight years later, severely wounded, his political orientation had undergone a traumatic shift.

He and his wife, Manijeh Hekmat, both filmmakers, had enthusiastically celebrated Khomeini’s successful revolution. Yet, in his final, secret letter from the war to his wife, he wrote: «All my friends are already buried in the dirt.» Later, he had to confront the fact that his best friend, with whom he had made films, had been executed for distributing «counter-revolutionary» leaflets.

The war claimed 200,000 lives. At the same time, another 15,000 people were executed as political prisoners under Khomeini’s regime, a man once hailed as a «beacon of hope for the oppressed worldwide» and a figure of resistance against the profits of the British oil industry, profits facilitated by the US and guaranteed by the deposed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who had been installed in 1941. While Iranians had believed that religious leadership would enable a return to national sovereignty and autonomy, the new leader merely exploited and perfected a surveillance and military-backed system of oppression that was already well-established and amply funded. Khomeini’s now-established budget was approximately 200 billion US dollars.

Pegah’s running commentary accompanies the multitude of documents and images. Her father never picks up a camera again, whereas her mother makes a name for herself as a filmmaker focusing on women’s issues. Her daughter suffers from her mother’s constant relocation and yearns for a home; she finds refuge with the loving family of her best friend. Even more significant for Pegah is her encounter with her literature teacher. This vivacious, graceful, and beautiful woman invites her to a family celebration filled with dancing and flowing wine. At the party, the high-spirited teacher does not wear a hijab. Pegah takes photographs of this admired, independent, and unveiled woman and organises small exhibitions of her works. The school administration eventually takes notice; she is interrogated, and her photographs are scrutinised. Ahangarani depicts this phase of her life through a nightmarish animated sequence. She observes the next school ceremony with detachment, sourcing archival footage that portrays the teaching staff as a collection of morbid gravediggers.

Her teacher is dismissed. Burdened by a crushing sense of guilt, she finds emotional support in her mother. Speaking openly with her daughter for the first time, the experienced woman addresses the question of blame from a political perspective. Pegah leaves school and continues her studies at night, while earning a living as an actress during the day. In one of her first roles, she plays a young woman who drops out of school. Her mother encourages her to develop her acting talent. Then, unexpectedly, her teacher, who has since fled to Germany, calls to congratulate her on her acting work. Over the ensuing decades, she appears in forty feature films while simultaneously establishing herself as a documentary filmmaker through her short films.

The next system of control — not only in Iran — might be even more perfect, requiring no torture at all.

The grief accumulates

Tumultuous events ensue. On one hand, Ahangarani follows the course of the «Women, Life, Freedom» movement, which defends women’s rights. On the other, she is confronted in 1990 with the suicide of her uncle Rashid. Already traumatised by the bombing of his school during the war, he had been an enthusiastic witness to the protests uniting 40,000 students, only to fall victim to their brutal suppression. The failed rebellion divides the population—yet again, as he observes with disillusionment.

For a brief period, the new liberal presidential candidate Mohammad Khatami offers a renewed glimmer of hope to the rebellious youth; he declares that a country cannot be governed by religion and tradition and promises freedom of speech. Yet the student dormitories, where her uncle had also moved, are brutally stormed. Prisoners are taken. Rashid is tortured while held in solitary confinement; tear gas pumped into the cells causes permanent damage to his eyes. The students, ready for anything and proclaiming «freedom or death,» are once again crushed by military force. Critical newspapers are shut down.

Three million people take to the streets once again in 2009 as part of the «Green Movement.» Hundreds of protesters lose their lives. Pegah risks filming the events while searching for her politically active best friend, eventually fleeing into the hallways of nearby buildings. Disillusioned by this renewed outbreak of violence, her friend leaves the country, as she later learns. She never sees him again.

Ahangarani also flees and now lives in London. Even to her, the farewell celebration party, seemingly so joyful and high-spirited, feels alien when she views the footage later at the editing table. In her new home, she marries and has a daughter named Lily, to whom she wants to impart nothing but a sense of security and a zest for life. Her daughter is also the only real counterweight to her longing to return to Iran, a plan no one advises her to pursue, especially given the new massacres of 2026, the largest in Iran’s recent history.

Yet, living far away, the director feels her life lacks meaning. She brings this conflict into her film, grappling with uncertainty about how it might end. Is her film merely an expression of a guilty conscience for not being with her family, friends and activists? She films the empty timeline on her computer screen; her inner crisis becomes tangibly immediate in this moment. She dedicated a chapter of the film to each of the five most important people in her life. Following each episode, she displays key geopolitical facts via on-screen text.

Then, war breaks out. The hope that an uprising might be possible turns into its opposite. Aggressive US attacks place the Iranian resisting population, who long for change, under even greater pressure, subjecting them to accusations of betraying their own country. The result is a renewed stagnation of the resistance, thanks to Trump.

Passing on the story

Ultimately, Pegah Ahangarani finds a final sequence of hope: her daughter. She wants to tell her many stories about all those who refused to give up. In this sense, her film marks a beginning. And one thing is certain: this regime of terror, too, will come to an end. Yet, we must not forget: the next system of control — not only in Iran — might be even more perfect, requiring no torture at all.