Confinement and Camaraderie
A diptych shot in an Iranian juvenile-detention facility for girls, Mehrdad Oskouei’s two documentaries shine a light both on the lives and friendships of those incarcerated within and the patriarchal oppression that awaits them beyond – this latter tyranny, in many cases, underlying the crimes they’re serving time for. Speaking with the director,
Anthony Carew explores the films’ varying approaches to the same topic and setting, along with the importance of allowing the subjects to tell their own stories.
There’s a scene in the documentary Starless Dreams (Mehrdad Oskouei, 2016) in which the subjects – a troop of teenage prisoners in girls juvie in Tehran – momentarily take command of the filming. They’re having a pizza-and-soft-drink party in celebration of a local holy day, and, grabbing the boom mic hanging overhead, the group breaks out in communal song, an off-the-cuff rendition of a Persian pop hit (the lyrics ‘unfair times have made me grow old / and tired of this worthless life’ hang heavily). Soon, a pair of the most outgoing girls – garrulous, boastful, lawless Shaghayegh and ‘class clown’ Hasrat – start interviewing each other, using plastic cups as microphone props, as if seizing control of the process through play.
Oskouei set up an unmanned camera in a room at Tehran’s Centre for Correction and Rehabilitation for Young Adults, turning it into a confessional.
‘Why is Uncle Mehrdad making this film about us?’ Hasrat asks. ‘We should’ve been making this film, not them,’ she adds, gesturing at the camera, at the
