It is easy to look at historical events such as political upheavals and social change as just cold facts and statistics. But at the heart of these events are still individual people who lives lives and the lives of those around them are impacted with the surety of a bowling ball dropped into a still pond, with ripples radiating out for years afterwards. Iranian actress turned director Pegah Ahangarani reminds us of this by putting human faces to just some of those impacted by the ongoing cycle of revolution and reprisal in Iranian history over the last five decades in her documentary Rehearsals For A Revolution.
Dividing her film into five chapters, Ahangarani traces the history of the country’s attempts at revolution and reform through the stories of her own family and close friends. The first segment focuses on her father Jamshid, a filmmaker whose short film often criticized Iranian society under the Shaw. After the Islamic Revolution, Jamshid would become an ardent supporter of the Ayatollah’s new government, joining the army and serving with some distinction. However, he becomes disillusioned when he learns that his best friend, and star of his films, has been imprisoned and then ultimately executed for speaking out against the Ayatollah. Another chapter tells the story of an uncle, Rashid, who was a student protestor in 1999, got caught up in a violent raid on his dormitory and would ultimately commit suicide. In a third segment, Ahangarani reminisces about a teacher who showed her kindness, but was ultimately fired from her job for the act of not wearing her head scarf in some photos of a private birthday party.
Perhaps the most harrowing segment of Rehearsals For A Revolution is the fourth, Ahangarani’s own story. It is 2009, during what will come to be called the Green Revolution. She is one of thousands of student protestors who take to the streets over the contested re-election of president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Taking after her parents, she is very much a filmmaker at this point in her life, and she keeps her camera rolling while franticly searching through the mob for a friend she is separated from. Here we see first hand the violence and brutality in which the protestors were met with, but also the random acts of kindness from strangers who would help shelter the students from the police.
The film ends with a final sequence in which Ahangarani reflects on her family’s and country’s history and how one has continually changed the trajectory of the other. Living in exile in Europe, she wonders if all the past attempts at revolution and change will lead to a country where she would be able to return to family? Will that country be there for her own daughter in the future? But as the film’s final title card states “The future remains uncertain.”
Rehearsals For A Revolution is a heartbreaking film. Ahangarani tells her family’s story in their own words, through pictures and video, deftly sketching out her family members in a way that we feel connected to them almost immediately. We feel the disillusionment of her father over the execution of his best friend and the heartbreak of her grandmother over Rashid’s tragic end.
While very much an autobiographical portrait, Rehearsals For A Revolution is also a strong piece of journalistic work. During much of the events that Ahangarani covers, Western reporters and camera crews were barred from the country. As the film presents some of the first real images from these various crackdowns to be seen, as shot by those who were there, she is putting faces to so many who were victims of the Iranian government’s violence. Doing so, she gives them a platform that lives beyond the events of that day.
