Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha, makers of My Favourite Cake, received an ovation at the Berlin film festival while under house arrest in Tehran. They speak about the struggle of creating art under a dictatorship
aryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha wave from their Tehran living room: prisoners on a two-seater sofa. Outside Iran, the couple are film-makers with a growing reputation. Their new work as co-directors,, screened to high praise at this year’s Berlin film festival. Then came a successful German release. Now, the movie is coming out in the UK.
Filming had already wrapped by June 2023, when Iranian security forces raided the home of the couple’s editor, Ata Mehrad. Hard drives with copies of the movie were seized. “Luckily, we had a version saved in Paris,” Sanaeeha says. He and Moghaddam packed for France, planning to edit the film there. But at Imam Khomeini International airport, they were prevented from boarding their flight. Their passports were confiscated.
. It was the second film Panahi made in secret after his own 20-year film-making ban. Afterwards, Moghaddam was forbidden to leave Iran for three and half years.their first feature: Ballad of a White Cow The mood on the shoot of this funny, tender movie grew fraught. “Every morning we thought: today they will raid us,” Sanaeeha says. “But we were lucky.”
While the hijab has become a weapon of repression in Iran, Moghaddam says the film’s aim was nothing more radical than honesty. “Inside our homes, Iranians are like people anywhere. And the truth is, our character Mahin would not wear the hijab indoors. But the authorities also want us to lie in the movies.”
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