Two Berlin festival films relive torture in Iranian prisons
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[February 22, 2023]
By James Imam
BERLIN (Reuters) - In “Where God is Not”, Iranian filmmaker Mehran
Tamadon´s unflinching account of the torture of former political
prisoners in Iran, the director asks his interviewees to relive the
horrors of their incarceration.
The film – which opened at the Berlin International Film Festival on
Saturday as part of a Tamadon double-bill exploring abuse in Iranian
prisons – spotlights torture practices the director says intensified
following the revolution of 1979 and continue today.
“It´s happening right now,” Tamadon told Reuters. “I´m sure that tonight
somebody is being tortured in that way.”
Shot in an abandoned warehouse in Paris, where Tamadon lives, the film
features interviews with three ex-prisoners in reconstructed cells and
interrogation chambers made from wood.
One interviewee, who says he ran a video equipment rental company in
Iran before competitors with government ties accused him of spying,
describes how electric cables were wrapped around his feet, lacerating
his skin, and assumes the excruciating “bundle” position, lying face
down with his hands cuffed to his folded legs.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2023/Feb/22/images/ads/current/ldn_sda_BUSINESSDIRECTORY_PROMO_2023.png)
Another former inmate recounted with tears how a small yet sadistic
tormenter named “Mr. Punisher” beat her and other female prisoners. The
journalist Taghi Rahmani, who has been imprisoned multiple times,
reveals how he maintained sanity while kept in a tiny cell.
The film, which forms part of an Iran focus at this year´s Berlinale,
aims to confront prison guards in Iran with their own cruelty, Tamadon
said.
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![](../images/022223PIX/ent_c.59.jpg)
Iranian filmmaker and director Mehran
Tamadon speaks during a Reuters interview about his movie Where God
is Not, during the 73rd Berlinale International Film Festival in
Berlin, Germany, February 20, 2023. REUTERS/Maximilian Schwarz
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2023/Feb/22/images/ads/current/xamis_lda_ANIMAL_2023.png) “One objective is to show what is
happening in Iran,” he added. “The second objective is for the
interrogators to see themselves in a mirror.”
Iran´s most infamous prisons have drawn headlines
in recent years, with sixteen video clips leaked in 2021 from Evin
prison – often nicknamed “Evin University” because of the many
dissident journalists and writers incarcerated there – showing what
Amnesty International described at the time as “appalling abuse of
prisoners”.
Iranian prisons chief Mohammad Mehdi Haj-Mohammadi later accepted
responsibility, describing the scenes in a tweet as "unacceptable
behaviour".
In “My Worst Enemy”, another Tamadon documentary that premiered at
the Berlinale on Tuesday, the director turns the tables, asking
three Iranian political refugees to interrogate him as if they were
agents of the Islamic Republic.
Tamadon said that films draw viewers into torture victims´ worlds.
“We can´t really show the violence in a documentary, can we?” he
said. “What is important is for the viewer to experience it in the
cinema.”
(Reporting by James Imam; Editing by Josie Kao)
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