Iranian director Mohammadi confronts Evin Prison's horrors with Berlinale entry 'Roya'

Record ID: 2341799

  • Title: Iranian director Mohammadi confronts Evin Prison's horrors with Berlinale entry 'Roya'
  • Date: 16th February 2026
  • Summary: BERLIN, GERMANY (FEBRUARY 15, 2026) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) FILMMAKER AND ACTIVIST, MAHNAZ MOHAMMADI, SAYING: "My home is Iran, but now in the right time I have no home. I'm like kind of a nomad just traveling until finishing my project. I have two other projects. One of them already is finished. The other one is on the final stage and after finishing also after fe
  • Embargoed:
  • Keywords: Berlin film festival Berlinale Iran Iranian film Iranian film Berlinale Mahnaz Mohammadi Roya Roya film
  • Location: BERLIN, GERMANY / VARIOUS FILMING LOCATIONS 
  • City: BERLIN, GERMANY / VARIOUS FILMING LOCATIONS 
  • Country: Germany
  • Topics: Arts/Culture/Entertainment,Europe,Film
  • Reuters ID: LVA006592016022026RP1
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: Iranian filmmaker Mahnaz Mohammadi, director of Berlin Film Festival entry "Roya", found it difficult to go back out in the public eye after her experiences in prison but forced herself to show that she would not be silenced.
    "Actually for me to be in front of the camera is one of the most painful things because when they torture you, you sit in front of the camera," Mohammadi told Reuters at the festival.
    "But I started making the film to go out, to do it. To be here, I'm thinking, who has their voice silenced, I'm there for them. And so I pushed myself to be here," she said.
    "Roya" opens by putting the viewer in the first person perspective of what it's like to be held at Tehran's notorious Evin Prison - the flickering lights, the screams of other prisoners, the interrogators' tactics, the cramped cell - before shifting to the titular character, played by Melisa Sozen.
    As if in a dream, Roya, a teacher, drifts through her experiences past and present, which have taken on a distorted, unsettling quality as they happen in no particular order.
    Mohammadi, who has a strong background in documentary filmmaking, said she needed to turn to fiction to properly tell the story based on her own experiences of being held at Evin.
    Evin, where many political prisoners, intellectuals, dual nationals, and others are held, has long been a symbol of the Islamic Republic's intolerance of dissent, and human rights organisations have condemned what they say is its systematic use of torture.
    "If I wanted to make my personal story, it couldn't be showable. I censored a lot to be a little bit bearable to watch," she said.
    "I couldn't go to a totally classic narration. I have to find a language for this film to tell the story because I wanted to give the audience this chance to experience it."
    She shot the film underground in Iran, where she plans to return after she finishes work on one of two projects.
    "My home is Iran, but now in the right time I have no home. I'm like kind of a nomad just travelling until finishing my project," she said.
    Mohammadi has not been permitted to make films in Iran since her first fiction feature "Son-Mother" in 2019.
    Her film is screening at a time when Iran is again the focus of international attention after clerical authorities there suppressed nationwide protests in the bloodiest crackdown since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
    Mohammadi said the latest campaign of mass arrests and intimidation showed how unliveable conditions in Iran had become.
    She recalled how a friend wrote to her about the crackdown: "In two days they killed, so brutally massacred, and everybody's still shocked, they need time to move on and speak about that.'"
    Her film, which will premiere on Wednesday (February 18) "is not just Roya, this story could be anyone under the suppression," she said.
    "They are losing their perception and just, I'm telling what's happened after that, how those people can live when the whole world, they want to try to forget it."
    (Production: Maximilian Schwarz, Hanna Rantala, Miranda Murray)
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