Tracked by the Islamic regime, Golshifteh Farahani left Iran in 2008. Having become French, the 39-year-old actress, eternally uprooted, continued a brilliant international career. Since the death of Mahsa Amini, on September 16, three days after her arrest by the Iranian morality police, she has loudly displayed her support for the revolt movement in her country of origin.
I wouldn’t have come here if…
If, by dint of harassment and harassment, the Iranian secret services had not forced me into exile. I hadn’t anticipated this departure, I had never imagined building a life outside my country, far from my people. It was infinitely painful, I paid a high price. My soul is severely crippled, and there will be no turning back. I have a new identity. But I believe in destiny and the challenges that force you to grow. And maybe this forced exile finally gave me wings…
You were born in 1983, four years after the Islamic revolution…
And in the middle of the war with Iraq. In other words, in a period of chaos. Observing today’s young demonstrators, most of whom were born in the 1990s and 2000s, makes me realize how completely my generation has been burned. Our own early childhood, that crucial moment when the spirit, confidence and reflexes are forged, took place under bombs and the din of sirens. We saw the fear in the eyes of our parents, we saw the houses destroyed in our street in Tehran. We felt death before understanding life. I belong to a terrorized generation. She didn’t take part in the revolution – that was the parents’ big business – but she lived through the post-revolution, the disaster after the earthquake.
With what consequences?
We didn’t have any children. Or very little. This is also what drives the government to intensify its pronatalist propaganda. Both old and young tend to laugh at us. But it’s a fact: out of twenty-five girls in my conservatory class, only six have had children. It tells how traumatized we are. We don’t believe in the future, we have no faith in life. The past is shit; the future does not exist.
Do you perceive a big difference with the generation which today occupies the streets, the secondary schools, the universities of the country?
Enormous ! This generation Z has known neither revolution nor war, it was born in the doldrums, stuck in a country that is a dictatorship. But she has Instagram, TikTok, she knows what’s going on in the world, she’s irreverent, without complex or shyness. I have the impression that she fears nothing. Besides, she doesn’t talk like us. His tone, his vocabulary, his body language are different from ours.
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