Iranian directors Behtash Sanaeeha and Maryam Moghadam have appealed for support after they received a court summons and anonymous death threats related to their film My Favourite Cake which world premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in 2024.
A heartwarming tale of love and loss and coming to terms with old age, My Favourite Cake stars Lily Farhadpour as a 70-year-old widow who reconnects with life’s small pleasures in the face of solitude, following her husband’s death.
In a message posted on social media, Sanaeeha said that after several interrogation sessions related to the film at the security prosecutor’s office for Iran’s notorious Evin jail, he and Moghadam had been summoned for a hearing at a revolutionary court on March 1.
The charges against them are: propaganda against the regime; production, distribution, and duplication of a film with obscene content; offending public decency and morality and screening the film without obtaining a screening and distribution license.
The couple have also told friends that they have been receiving death threats from anonymous callers.
My Favourite Cake has incurred the wrath of Iran’s authoritarian Islamic Republic regime due to the fact that Farhadpour is shown without a headscarf, while her character is also seen seeking companionship with an equally lonely widower and drinking wine with him.
The drama is among a growing number of underground features coming out of Iran in the wake of the 2022 Woman Life Freedom protests, sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini, in which filmmakers challenge the Islamic Republic’s sexist rules around what women should wear and how they should act.
These films are seen as a sign that regardless of the government’s harsh crackdown and attempts to suppress the protests, something has changed in Iranian society for good in the wake of the Woman Life Freedom movement.
The situation still remains extremely dangerous for filmmakers who stand-up to the regime with director Navid Mihandoust, for example, currently serving a three-and-a-half sentence on trumped up charges, related to his refusal to cooperate in a plot targeting U.S.-based Iranian activist journalist Masih Alinejad.
Husband and wife team Sanaeeha and Moghadam were banned from travelling to Berlin for the premiere of My Favourite Cake, while Farhadpour and co-star Esmaeel Mehrabi were allowed to make the trip and held up photos of their absent directors at the press conference.
Moghadam, who also holds Swedish nationality, and Sanaeeha were then stopped from travelling to Sweden last September, with security agencies confiscating their passports at Tehran airport.
Farhadpour, who has also received a summons, has mounted a petition and campaign in support of the directors.
