I Am Nasrine director Tina Gharavi: 'The British public has been hijacked'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2013/feb/08/i-am-nasrine-tina-gharavi-interview

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When Tina Gharavi's film I Am Nasrine was nominated for a Bafta for outstanding debut, the biggest surprise wasn't the feature's unexpected jury selection, but that it made it to release at all. The subversive work filmed between north-east England and Iran – where it was shot in secret and smuggled out of the country – touches on the restrictions to freedom under the Iranian regime, but its real interest lies in the UK's contemporary refugee experience.

The Iranian-born, UK-based director and lecturer at Newcastle University has been making documentaries for more than a decade that give voice to marginalised communities. Since her low-budget feature I Am Nasrine caught the eye of the jury she has been overwhelmed by a media whirlwind of interest. "It's amazing we even got shortlisted. It was kind of like a really strange hoax," Gharavi says, who only heard about the nomination when a friend congratulated her over Facebook.

The debut fiction feature follows free-spirited 16-year-old Nasrine who is arrested by the Iranian police – for riding on the back of a boy's motorcycle – and sexually assaulted in prison. She flees to the UK with her older brother Ali and moves into a Newcastle council estate that's a far cry from their comfortable middle-class existence in Tehran.

The plot is synonymous with Gharavi's own background: she left Iran at the age of six to live with her father in the west, only returning 20 years later. "I wanted to write a film about second-generation people like myself who are neither from the east or west, trapped between two identities," she says. The director also took inspiration from stories gathered from UK asylum seekers she had worked with since 2001, and the film's lead actor, Mischa Sadeghi.

Despite the risk of making such a provocative film, Gharavi was able to find a sympathetic producer who gave her the connections to make the Iran shoot possible. Dubbed the "real-life Argo", the shoot was cloaked in secrecy (the crew masquerading as the second unit for a larger TV shoot). Tensions ran high when the police paid a visit – the assistant director had to step in while Gharavi pretended to be a bystander.

Another hair-raising moment came when Gharavi had to smuggle the hard drives out of the country in her handbag and was pulled aside at police customs. Pretending not to speak Farsi, luckily her American accent was enough of a cover as the policeman, seemingly embarrassed, waved her through. "I think my heart was in my mouth," Gharavi says. "Until the wheels of the plane took off I was really crapping it."

The story highlights the risky climate for film-makers in Iran, a sad irony at a time when Iranian cinema is in the spotlight, following Asghar Farhadi's Oscar win. Since the green revolution the government has arrested a string of directors; others have fled the country altogether. Directors Mohammad Rasoulof and Jafar Panahi were both given six-year sentences in December 2010, an added sting for the latter was a 20-year ban on film-making. With oppression though, comes creativity: Panahi's illegally made film Closed Curtain premieres at the 2013 Berlinale.

I Am Nasrine is a contribution to that movement of protest. No longer able to return to Iran, Gharavi doesn't regret the sacrifice. Sharing their frustration at not being able to join the mass street protests in 2009, for Gharavi and Mischa Sadeghi this film is their protest song. "It was either let them win and silence us or raise awareness about the situation in Iran," Gharavi says.

The real eye of the film, though, is not directed towards the vibrant streets of Tehran, nor is it in the claustrophobic Iranian prison with its Caravaggio-esque lighting: but on the UK refugee experience. The film perfectly captures the current climate of hostility towards asylum seekers, from government bureaucracy to resentment from Nasrine and Ali's neighbours.

Gharavi though, lays responsibility for the wave of anti-asylum sentiment at the feet of the media. "The British public have been hijacked since 2001 by someone who is actually an immigrant himself, Rupert Murdoch. He's tried to sell newspapers by peddling xenophobia, which has created a distorted and warped sense that asylum seekers are overtaking."

The director's work plays a vital role in raising discussion about the plight of asylum seekers, and it's a subject she has dedicated a career to through her media production company Bridge+Tunnel. The director sees the empowering potential of film itself, a fact evidenced in the production training courses she runs in diverse communities. "Many times someone in the group says: 'This project saved my life.' It's about giving people power to express themselves."

Though Gharavi believes her chances of winning the Bafta are slim – "There's the Muppets in there for God's sake; even I want the Muppets to win" – she is grateful for the push the nomination has given the film. Now Gharavi is working on a big-budget gangster film and a Kurdistan thriller. Also, her multimedia exhibition Last of the Dictionary Men, on the South Shields' Yemeni sailor community, is currently exhibiting at the Mosaic Rooms. Talk about diversity.