Movies

An interview with Maryam Keshavarz

Maryam Keshavarz is the director of the new film, Circumstance, which follows two high school girls navigating their way through life in modern-day Tehran. It gives a fictional glimpse in to a world where tradition, love and identity collide.

After a recent screening in Philadelphia, Maryam sat down with us to discuss the inspiration for Circumstance, what Iran is like for women today and the romantic relationship between the girls in the film. AfterEllen.com: What is Circumstance about in your own words?

Maryam Keshavarz: Circumstance on one level is about a very liberal family in Tehran, Iran who is torn apart when the brother and sister start to go in different directions. But also on another level it’s a love triangle about a brother and sister in love with the same girl.

AE: I’m just curious what the inspiration for the film was.

MK: The psychological inspiration for writers. Many things. I was trying to focus the background on Iran; my background is Iranian. I think I wanted to do something about young people in Iran. From a woman’s perspective, from my own perspective as a young woman as a teenager, like, navigating the underground world of Iran with my cousins. I was struck at how young and brave just they’re always going against the grain. This great dramatic structure. You know, people going against what is expected of them.

And then I’m not really interested in films about “politics,” I was always interested in films about family dynamics maybe because I grew up in a huge family, so the idea was I had an uncle who lived in the U.S., he had gone to MIT, and he had gone back to Iran in ’79. So when people were coming to America, he was going back to Iran to take part in the protests. He ended up getting stuck there and staying there raising his family there. And he was incredibly liberal in any ways like the father in the film. I was fascinated by how does someone who is very liberal, open-minded, who is very much against like what the status quo of the government, how do they create family and sanctuary and utopia. And I think that is very human. Like in any repressive culture people try to create a special space, and what are the vulnerabilities of that. AE: One of the things that you had mentioned was that this comes from a personal space. So I guess the personal space is the connection to Iran. You mentioned that you had grown up both in the U.S. and Iran.

MK: My parents came in the ’60s, so unlike a lot of Iranians who live in the U.S. who came during the Revolution who don’t go back to Iran, my family came because there weren’t a lot of doctors in America in the sixties because doctors were going to Vietnam, so my dad was recruited to be a doctor.

But I have two passports, and I feel very connected to both cultures. I have two passports … In some levels they [Iranians] know a lot more than Americans about politics. Like talk to any Iranian cabbie in New York and they’ll tell you about Obama and what he should and shouldn’t be doing.

AE: I’m curious, you said that you weren’t interested in any political aspects, but are you expecting any political outcomes from the film?

MK: You know, I think that in a world where like social interactions, women’s bodies, all these things are controlled by the state, even the smallest things are political. Not political, in what we consider in the Western World, marching in the streets, but politics of relationships, politics of body. I don’t know.

I don’t make films as a call to arms, they reflect a deep need to tell a story. How films are read, we can never foresee. You don’t know how audiences will read and project your film. You don’t own the film. The author is dead. It’s what the author reads.

AE: Touching on that, how do you think audiences will interpret the film? It’s a relationship between two women. How do you think, one, they will interpret the film and two, they should interpret the film?

MK: There isn’t any correct way to interpret any piece of art. I think what art does that other mediums don’t is that there is a space for the viewer to project on to the characters, to project on to spaces, to identify, or hate, all these different emotions on to film. I think that’s why cinema is so powerful.

I don’t know what your background is. I don’t know if you have some sort of addiction. Do you relate to the brother, who is someone who is struggling as someone who isn’t evil? Do you relate to the sister because you’ve been in that situation? It depends on your background. It depends on many things.

AE: One of the other things is that there is a huge intersectionality of so many things whether it’s tradition, culture, identity, sexual orientation —

MK: The layers of who we are. AE: Exactly! And it would be terrible for people to sort of boil this film down to one thing.

MK: And that was important to me that a.) it would not be about one issue, because I think that even if you peg these women or say that they are queer, that is one of the many identities that they embody in the film. They are also part of a family, they are also part of a school, there is multiple aspects of how they interact in the world and how they’re forced to interact in the world. I didn’t want the film to be just about the girls, I wanted it to be about the family and how they struggle. I think it provides a sort of richness in to who they are.

AE: There were some really timely moments in the film, and you talked about this in the Q&A. Like for example, where they’re dubbing over Milk. You touched on the importance of dubbing and how things fit together with the Arab Spring.

MK: It’s interesting how that happens. Obviously, all this film was made before that is happening now in the Arab World. It was made after the Green Wave in Iran, although the film takes place before the Green Wave in Iran. But for me, there is this sort of disconnect even between the Gay Movement, because I lived in San Francisco for a period of time. It’s like “Oh, there is the Gay Movement” and then there is liberation ideology. And for some people that is so separate.

It’s funny because one of [Harvey] Milk‘s friends interviewed me in San Francisco and he was saying that Milk would be really happy about this movie because he really saw that the Gay Movement was really tied to liberation movements around the world. He really had a worldview of civil rights and of human rights. It’s unfortunate that it’s like us against them, when really if we’re talking about human rights, it should be something on a much greater scale, but that’s not necessarily the dialogue that happens because we’ve become so polarized, especially ’cause it’s the Western World and the Muslim World. Well, what does that mean? The Muslim World? We have within the Muslim World, we have such a wide variation. Someone asked me does this represent Iranian culture, what’s happening in Iranian culture? And I’m like wow, I don’t think any film can do that. A film can only be about one particular person or one particular person’s story, but in reality there’s multitudes.

AE: Right. So then could you –

MK: I mean, could you imagine American cinema without Spike Lee, without Ang Lee, without Kelly Reichardt, I mean other voices? What if it was only Hollywood?

AE: Right. Would that be representative of American cinema?

MK: In some worlds it is because that is the only view there is because maybe that’s the only cinema that reaches most of the world. They have a certain viewpoint, which maybe is not the reality of American cinema, too.

AE: One of the things you mentioned was that you filmed in Lebanon. And I remember in the Q&A, you had talked about the feeling in Lebanon and how it feels similar to Tehran. Could you talk about that?

MK: Well it’s a tiny country compared to Iran in both population and size which actually was a bit attractive for me because I could have the sea, and the ocean all within, like, an hour of each other. The people, we look alike ethnically. There are very few Shi’ah Msulim populations, the biggest one being Iran followed by southern Iraq and Lebanon. And culturally, they’re similar, there’s a lot of attraction between Iran and Lebanon. And also Lebanon is a very liberal place especially if you’re not shooting a film. [Laughs]

AE: [Laughs]

MK: But once you start doing something like making a film, then the parallel between Iran and the U.S. – I mean Iran and Lebanon comes closer and closer. Because you know, we had to have a fake script to get it approved. They have a censorship board. AE: Right. I remember you said it was originally 120 pages.

MK: We got it down to 60. They were like, “Take out any reference to sexuality or religion.” And then the fact, you know, that military can come on your set at any time and question what you’re shooting, they can hold your film. All those things are, you know, things that people face when you’re shooting in Iran. It was quite difficult. And interesting enough, Lebanon is a battleground between the U.S. and Iran in terms of the politics. So part of Lebanese government and people are very on line with the United States, part of them are in line with Iran.

AE: So there’s that duality.

MK: It was perfect because in some neighborhoods I would say I was American. In some neighborhoods I would say I was Iranian. Whatever was the benefit of the production. Even in the production, we had people from all over the world.

Circumstance will be released in New York and LA on August 26 and in select cities in the weeks following.

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