Seven Winters in Tehran

Steffi Niederzoll / Germany, France / 2023 / Czech Premiere / 97 min.

synopsis

Tehran, July 2007. Nineteen-year-old architecture student Reyhaneh Jabbari has a business meeting with an older man. During the meeting, he tries to rape her. Reyhaneh stabs him in self-defence. She is arrested the same day and, despite international protests, sentenced to death. Using secretly made video footage, witness statements and letters from prison, the film vividly reconstructs the woman's years of hardship and the desperate cries for justice from her family and lawyers. Reyhaneh refuses to drop the sexual assault charges, and her story becomes a symbol of the struggle for rights, freedom and safe spaces for Iranian women.

“It was clear to me that the footage shot by the family had to be the heart of the film. The rest was footage […] that I shot with a small team. In addition, there was footage from the prison that had been secretly shot by relatives who had managed to take a cell phone inside during the visit.” – Steffi Niederzoll

Source: Iran Journal

biography

Steffi Niederzoll (1981) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Berlin. Her short films have been screened at several international festivals. She was part of the 1000 Gestalten collective, which came to the fore during the G20 Summit in Hamburg in 2017. Her feature debut Seven Winters in Tehran was awarded in Berlin and at CPH:DOX in Copenhagen.