An Iranian citizen journalist, who writes under a pseudonym to protect her identity, wrote the following article inside Iran.
Zohreh Rahmat, Citizen Journalist, Tabriz
It all begins with a simple photograph on social media, an image that very quickly goes viral. It’s a photo of yet another actor or director who is fleeing in Iran to pursue their dreams and a better life abroad, to escape to a place that promotes creative freedom and where theater and film professionals can work without interference.
This mass exodus of movie and television stars and directors is, sadly, nothing new. It dates back to the birth of the Islamic Republic itself. Recently, it has become a hot topic again, mainly because of social media and greater amounts of information being shared online. In fact, the free flow of information has greatly accelerated the number of actors and directors leaving Iran, to the extent that it has become a considerable problem for the national broadcaster, Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), and for the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance.
Over the past few months, this wave of emigration has begun to worry officials, who refuse to accept that they are in any way responsible for it. But it is they who — rather than identifying the problem and solving it — have caused this conflict. Authorities clamp down on artists, and pick and choose who can and cannot appear on television. They issue strange and baffling directives and make unreasonable demands on artists. They block many actors from appearing on Iranian state-run television.
Iranian female actors are on the frontline of this battle. Shortly after the Islamic Revolution of 1979, wearing the hijab became compulsory, and strict Islamic dress codes were enforced. This continues to affect women actors in Iran today. If they dare to do something controversial, such as reveal a strand of hair, post pictures of their private lives online or express an opinion, they are forced to answer to the courts or hardline media. It is no wonder that some of these women have rebelled against the state-imposed hijab and the way they have been treated, and that many have chosen to go abroad. Numerous male directors and actors have also joined their female counterparts in protests against Iran’s restrictive cultural environment.
Here, IranWire highlights the female actors who have made a stand, refusing to put up with the situation any longer. These women fall into two categories: those who left Iran when they were already famous, and those who became famous once they left.
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Mina Lakani: From Fajr Favorite to Exile
Until September 2011, when she appeared on an episode of Shabahang TV, part of the Persian service of Voice of America (VOA) programming, nobody knew that well-known Iranian TV actor Mina Lakani had actually left Iran.
Lakani, who began working in cinema after starting out in theater, won the award for Best Actress in 1994 at Tehran’s Fajr International Film Festival. Following this, she appeared in several Iranian series, always observing the Islamic Republic’s rules and wearing the full Islamic headscarf. But when the VOA released an interview with her, and she appeared with her hair uncovered, the Iranian public soon realized she was no longer based in Iran — a revelation that quickly spread across social networks.
Lakani told the interviewer that she had left Iran a year earlier “in spite of my own wishes” because of what had happened following the disputed 2009 presidential election. “It is the duty of artists to stand by the people and I, like other artists, came under pressure afterward,” she said. She emphasized that although she had not supported any specific faction during the election, she had been unofficially banned from appearing on television, and had received threatening phone calls. As a result, she decided to leave her country.
In 2013, Lakani appeared in a comical play about social problems in Iran. The play, which was entitled The Striptease, enjoyed a successful run before Iranian audiences in several countries.
Hannaneh Shahshahani: The Instagram Controversy
Hannaneh Shahshahani was the first Iranian female actor to openly and publicly rise up against compulsory hijab in Iranian television and cinema.
She began her acting career when she appeared in a television series at the age of four. Her parents later sent her to the United States to study music, and she returned to Iran when she was 16.
The director of Iranian TV series The Pahlavi Hat decided to cast Shahshahani after seeing her performance in the 2005 film In the Name of the Father, in which she had starred alongside Golshifteh Farahani. The series looked at the events surrounding Reza Shah’s 1936 decree banning women from wearing chadors and the traditional hijab. Shahshahani played an Iranian woman who stood up against the ban, believing that hijab was part of an appropriate Islamic lifestyle.
But as the series was underway, semi-nude photographs of Shahshahani appeared on Instagram, causing widespread controversy. The contrast between the character she was playing in The Pahlavi Hat and the photographs circulating on social networks was so pronounced that her mother tried to put an end to the controversy by claiming that they were fake. Despite this, Shahshahani spoke up, outlining the difficulties Iranian actresses face, and confirming that the photographs were definitely of her.
Since the scandal, Shahshahani has left show business and has pursued a career in modeling.
Sadaf Taherian: From Obscurity to Headlines
Sadaf Taherian appeared in a handful of films and television programs, but unlike Golshifteh Farahani and Mina Lakani, she only really became a celebrity after she removed her hijab. In October 2015, Taherian posted photographs of herself without the hijab on her Facebook and Instagram pages, and announced that she had left Iran for Dubai.
Iran’s hardline media and the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance denounced her as “immoral,” and banned her from acting. This led to her celebrity status, as her name appeared in Iranian and international media.
Soon after that, journalist Masih Alinejad, whose high-profile campaign My Stealthy Freedom encourages women to publish photographs of themselves without the hijab, interviewed Teherian on her weekly program Tablet, which is broadcast by Voice of America’s Persian outlet.
“When I wore hijab on screen I did it for the love of my career and for the film,” she told Alinejad. “But I want to live in a place and live in way that makes me happy.”
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