A documentary, devoid of counterpoint, traces the journey of the feminist activist who, as early as 2014, is the first to have set up campaigns against the compulsory port of the veil in Iran.
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In recent times, crossing women without veil in the streets of the Islamic Republic of Iran has been on the way to becoming more and more frequent. An unimaginable scene before September 16. That day, the Iranian Mahsa Amini, 22, died in Tehran at the end of his police custody in the premises of the Police of Manners, who monitors respect for dress codes.
Since then, every day, in Iranian cities, women go out in the street, sometimes without veil, and chant, accompanied by men, slogans against the regime. Today, it is more than ever appropriate to discover the character and the journey of Masih Alinejad, the one who was the first to have imagined and to have set up campaigns against the compulsory port of the veil.
This activist, exiled to the United States, asked, as early as 2014, Iranian women send her photos of them, without veil. Entitled “My Stealthy Freedom” (“My furtive freedom”, in French), his campaign mobilized many women living in Iran. Building on this success, Masih Alinejad, now 46 years old, launched in 2017 the campaign of “White Wednesdays”, which invited Iranian women to go out in public every Wednesday bearing a white scarf as a sign of opposition to the ‘Obligation to cover your hair.
The audacity of the Iranian women
Wednesday, December 27, 2017, a woman, alone, climbs on an electric wardrobe in the center of Tehran, her white veil tied around a stick. She agitates it gently, her black hair released. She was quickly stopped. Later, her name appears on social networks: her name is Vida Movahed. Until then, the actions of the Iranian women against the wearing of the veil were not done as much in public.
The days that followed the action of Vida Movahed, other women adopted the same gesture, risking arrest and years in prison. During this winter, a taboo is broken, thanks to the audacity of the Iranian women, but also thanks to the imagination of Masih Alinejad, who well felt the desire of Iranian women to get rid of the burden of the veil.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran uses Hidjab to abuse people. When we have finally torn this veil, it will be the end of this regime,” assures the activist in the 2021 documentary. Her words have today. Hs a strong resonance, because the uprising that crosses Iran, from the question of the veil, makes the whole Iranian political system tremble. The death of Mahsa Amini aroused an unprecedented uprising in its longevity, its extent and its power; And a repression that has already made at least 240 victims.
The documentary also contains heartbreaking and intimate scenes from the heavy price that Masih Alinejad paid for his activities. We see her, in particular, being rejected by her mother in Iran. Masih’s older brother Ali has just been arrested in Iran for informing him of a plot of the Iranian intelligence services to attract the journalist to Turkey and kidnap.
The only downside: the documentary maker, the Irano-Swedish Nahid Persson, struggles to put distance between her and her subject. The word has not been given to the criticisms of the Iranian activist, some of whom criticize her, among other things, her close ties with very conservative American policies.