Here the Seats Are Vacant 

In September 2022, a twenty-two-year-old Kurdish woman named Jina (Mahsa) Amini died while in the custody of Iran’s morality police. The ostensible cause of death, reported by the authorities, was quickly punctured by eyewitness revelation that Amini was severely beaten by her captors as punishment for not wearing a hijab in accordance with state mandates. The event became a catalyst for protests that continue to unfold across Iran and around the world, laying bare the schism between the weaponization of fundamentalist Islamic rule and contemporary conceptions of human rights. With their lives and rights to autonomy and self-expression at stake, the voices of Iranian women fighting for a say in the future of their society are being amplified louder than ever.

Docunight Presents on the Criterion Channel showcases four women-directed documentaries that highlight the struggle and resilience of a handful of women's experiences in Iran. The program is an offering from Docunight (a streaming platform dedicated to documentaries from and about Iran), examining the roles that women are taking to fight for a say in their society.

The Broker, directed by Azadi Moghadam, follows the operations of a woman-owned dating agency. In Sahar Mosayebi’s Platform, the viewer witnesses the sacrifice and dedication of three sisters training for an international martial arts competition. Radiograph of a Family pieces together the director’s own family history; Firouzeh Khosravani narrates over still photographs, archival footage, and family home videos to describe her mother’s relationship to Islam before, during, and after the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Finally, Here the Seats Are Vacant, directed by Shiva Sanjari, offers a portrait of an actress, writer, and performer who was stripped of her livelihood after the Islamic Revolution in Iran.

Taken together, these films reveal complex and nuanced narratives of women's experiences in Iran that echo the Kurdish slogan adopted by today’s movement: Woman, Life, Freedom. We spoke with May Arjomand, co-founder of Full Potential, an arts collective and project aiming to empower female agency in southwest Asia, North Africa, and their wider diasporas, to learn more about the importance and impact of these films.

Jeremy Lawrence: What are the common threads you see between these four films?