Dissident directors hold up ‘mirror’ to Iranian women’s desire

This combination of file photos created on February 1, 2024 shows Iranian actress Maryam Moghaddam (L) and Iranian film director Behtash Sanaeeha (R), both posing during the 'Berlinale Summer Special' film festival in Berlin, Germany on June 18, 2021. (AFP)
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Updated 17 February 2024
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Dissident directors hold up ‘mirror’ to Iranian women’s desire

  • Moghaddam, 52, said their crime was, with the film, “crossing so many red lines which have been forbidden in Iran for 45 years”

BERLIN: Two Iranian directors said they have been barred from traveling to the Berlin film festival for their new movie’s premiere Friday for breaking one of their country’s biggest taboos: showing a woman pursuing a “normal life.”
Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha told AFP from Tehran that they knew they were playing with fire with “My Favourite Cake,” one of 20 films vying for the Golden Bear top prize.
Nevertheless, the crackdown came as a shock last autumn.
“They raided our editor’s place and took all the hard drives and computers of the project,” Sanaeeha, 43, said by video link.
“Then when we wanted to leave Tehran to go to Paris to finish the post-production, at the airport they took our passports.”
Moghaddam, 52, said their crime was, with the film, “crossing so many red lines which have been forbidden in Iran for 45 years.”
“It’s about the woman living her life, who wants to have a normal life, which is forbidden for women in Iran.”

The bittersweet story spotlights 70-year-old Mahin, a retired nurse played by acclaimed culture journalist Lily Farhadpour.
After three decades on her own following her husband’s death, Mahin finds a man who catches her fancy while they are both dining alone at a pensioners’ restaurant.
They strike up a friendly rapport and are soon recalling their more permissive youth — before the 1979 Islamic Revolution — when drinking, dancing and “plunging necklines” were part of city life.
Mahin invites Faramarz to her home and, dodging the prying eyes of her neighbors, removes her hijab, pours two tall glasses of wine and pulls out her beloved “oldies” CDs.
“Showing a woman without her hijab is forbidden. But most women, even religious women, are without hijab at home,” Moghaddam said.
“Drinking alcohol or dancing or meeting a partner — everything happens in Iran, but inside the walls because it’s forbidden outside. We wanted to be dedicated to reality and show it.”

The scenes mark “a new thing for Iranian cinema,” she said, holding up a “mirror” to a way of life many still long for.
Sanaeeha noted that the case of Mahsa Amini, the young Iranian-Kurdish woman whose custody death sparked months of anti-government protests, came while the film was already in pre-production.
“We were depressed about the situation happening in our country,” Sanaeeha said.
“But we talked, all the crew, and we explained (to) them what we are doing in this film — it’s about women, it’s about life and it’s about freedom. So it was our duty to finish this film.”
In a harrowing scene, Mahin confronts officers from the Morality Police arresting young women for not properly covering their hair — the same offense that put Amini in their crosshairs.
“You’d kill her over a few strands of hair,” Mahin screams.
The late-in-life love story of Mahin and Faramarz feels revolutionary as they escape their deeply conservative society’s strictures — at least for one night.
“We wanted to tell a deeper story about life, about seizing the moment,” Moghaddam said.
The Berlin film festival, which has long championed Iran’s embattled directors, urged authorities to allow the filmmakers to travel. As has become customary, it will leave two seats empty for them at the premiere.
Farhadpour held up a picture of the two directors after a warmly received press preview and condemned their absence in Berlin.
“This is an absolutely impossible way of behaving on the part of the Iranian government,” she said.
Moghaddam and Sanaeeha’s previous film “Ballad of a White Cow,” a drama about the death penalty, premiered at the 2021 Berlinale, as the event is known.
They said it has since been banned in Iran but is available for downloads on European and US platforms.
“With the Internet, you cannot censor the art so the film will come out” at home and abroad, Sanaeeh said.
However, the stakes for independent filmmakers remain daunting.
“You have to risk your career, your income, your everything,” Moghaddam said.
 

 


Israel says retrieved official Syrian archive on executed spy Eli Cohen

Updated 5 sec ago
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Israel says retrieved official Syrian archive on executed spy Eli Cohen

  • Eli Cohen was discovered by Syrian intelligence and publically hanged in Damascus on May 18, 1965
  • Among the items recovered are a handwritten will penned by Cohen hours before his execution, audio recordings and files from his interrogations

JERUSALEM: Israel announced on Sunday that it had retrieved the official Syrian archive on famed spy Eli Cohen — a cache of 2,500 documents, photographs and personal effects linked to the Mossad agent executed in Damascus in 1965.
“In a complex covert operation by the Mossad, in cooperation with a strategic partner service, the official Syrian archive on Eli Cohen was brought to Israel,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement, referring to the country’s external intelligence agency.
“The trove contains thousands of items that had been kept under tight security by Syrian intelligence for decades,” the statement added.
Cohen, who developed close ties with high-level political and military figures in Syria as part of a four-year espionage operation, was eventually discovered by Syrian intelligence.
He was publically hanged in Damascus on May 18, 1965.
Cohen’s story was dramatized in the Netflix minizeries “The Spy,” starring the British actor Sacha Baron Cohen.
The prime minister added that retrieving the archive reflected Israel’s “unwavering commitment to bringing back all our missing, prisoners, and hostages.”
The statement was an apparent reference both to the 58 captives, dead and alive, being held by Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza, as well as the announcement last week that Israel had retrieved from Syria the body of a soldier missing for 43 years, also in a covert Mossad operation.
Sunday’s statement said that the recovery of the items came after “decades of Mossad intelligence, operational, and technological effort to find every scrap of information about Eli Cohen in the quest to shed light on his fate and discover the location of his burial.”
Over the years, multiple operations have been carried out to that end, the statement said, including “inside enemy states.”
Mossad director David Barnea said in the statement that recovering the archive was a “significant achievement,” and “another step toward locating our man in Damascus’ burial place.”
Among the items recovered are a handwritten will penned by Cohen hours before his execution, audio recordings and files from his interrogations and those of his sources, letters he wrote to family members in Israel and photographs from his clandestine mission in Syria.
Additionally, the cache included belongings taken from his home after his arrest, including forged passports and photographs of him with senior Syrian military and government officials, as well as notebooks and diaries listing Mossad tasks.
Also discovered was a file labelled “Nadia Cohen,” detailing Syrian intelligence monitoring of Cohen’s wife’s campaign to free her husband.
In a special meeting on Sunday, Netanyahu and Barnea shared the trove of items with Nadia Cohen, the statement said.


Israel army says 2 projectiles launched from Gaza after air raid sirens sound

Updated 44 min 44 sec ago
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Israel army says 2 projectiles launched from Gaza after air raid sirens sound

  • One projectile was intercepted and the other fell in an open area

JERUSALEM: The Israeli army said two projectiles were launched from the Gaza Strip on Sunday, shortly after it announced it had commenced “extensive ground operations” across the besieged Palestinian territory.
“Following the sirens that sounded in Kissufim, two projectiles were identified crossing into Israel from the central Gaza Strip,” the army said, adding one was intercepted and the other fell in an open area.


Israeli forces have demolished 600 Palestinian houses in Jenin since January offensive

Updated 18 May 2025
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Israeli forces have demolished 600 Palestinian houses in Jenin since January offensive

  • Shops, houses and infrastructure in Al-Sharqi and Al-Hadaf neighbourhoods sustain heaviest damage
  • Forces arrest a prisoner who was released during Israel-Hamas truce in November 2023

LONDON: Israeli forces have demolished nearly 600 Palestinian houses in the Jenin refugee camp, according to the town municipality, where Israel has been carrying out military operations for the past 118 days.

On Sunday, forces intensified dredging and destruction operations in the Jenin refugee camp, causing significant damage to its water and electricity infrastructure and main roads, while continuing to block access to the area.

The Jenin Municipality has documented the total destruction of 600 houses in the camp, while others were either partially damaged or have been abandoned by residents since Israel launched a major offensive in January.

The neighborhoods of Al-Sharqi and Al-Hadaf sustained the heaviest damage — to shops, houses and infrastructure — the Wafa news agency reported.

Also on Sunday, Israeli forces arrested Yasmeen Shaaban at her home in Al-Jalameh village, north of Jenin. Shaaban, who spent 21 months in prison, was released in November 2023 during the first temporary truce and captive-exchange arrangement between Israel and Hamas.

The municipality reported that 22,000 people are displaced in Jenin as Israeli forces increase enforcement in the town and its refugee camp. The military operation has caused heavy losses to businesses in Jenin, leading to many shop closures and a decrease in shopper footfall from nearby villages, with an estimated loss of $300 million.

Since Israel launched its offensive on January 21 in Jenin, at least 40 people have been killed, while hundreds have been arrested and injured.


Italian MPs protest at Egypt’s Gaza border against war

Italian and European parliament members hold placards during a protest in front of the Egyptian side of Rafah border crossing.
Updated 18 May 2025
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Italian MPs protest at Egypt’s Gaza border against war

  • The group — including 11 members of the Italian parliament, three MEPs and representatives of NGOs — held signs reading “Stop genocide now”

RAFAH: Italian parliamentarians protested on Sunday in front of Egypt’s Rafah border crossing with Gaza, calling for aid access and an end to the war in the devastated Palestinian territory.
“Europe is not doing enough, nothing to stop the massacre,” Cecilia Strada, an Italian member of the European parliament, told AFP.
The group — including 11 members of the Italian parliament, three MEPs and representatives of NGOs — held signs reading “Stop genocide now,” “End illegal occupation” and “Stop arming Israel.”
“There should be a complete embargo on weapons to and from Israel and a stop to trade with illegal settlements,” Strada said.
The protesters laid toys on the ground in solidarity with Gaza’s children, who the UN warns face “a growing risk of starvation, illness and death” more than two months into a total Israeli aid blockade.
At least 15,000 children have been killed in Gaza since the Israel-Hamas war began in October 2023, according to the United Nations.
Israel has faced mounting pressure to lift its aid blockade, as UN agencies warn of critical shortages of food, clean water, fuel and medicines.
It resumed its offensive on March 18, ending a two-month truce in its war against Hamas triggered by the Palestinian militant group’s October 2023 attack on Israel.
On Saturday Israel announced an expanded military campaign, killing dozens of people in new strikes.
“We hear the bombs right now,” Walter Massa, president of Italian non-profit organization Associazione Ricreativa Culturale Italiana, told AFP near the crossing.
“The Israeli army continues to do what it believes is right in the face of an international community that does not intervene, and in Gaza, beyond the Rafah crossing border, people continue to die,” he said.
UN chief Antonio Guterres said Saturday said he was “alarmed” at the escalation and called for “a permanent ceasefire, now.”
Italy’s government on Saturday reiterated its calls to Israel to stop attacking Gaza, with Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani saying: “Enough with the attacks.”
“We no longer want to see the Palestinian people suffer,” Tajani said.
Gaza’s health ministry said Sunday 3,193 people have been killed since Israel resumed its strikes on March 18, taking the war’s overall toll to 53,339.


Lebanon says soldier among two wounded in Israeli strike

Updated 18 May 2025
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Lebanon says soldier among two wounded in Israeli strike

BEIRUT: Lebanon said two people including a soldier were wounded in an Israeli strike Sunday in the country’s south, where the army has been deploying after a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah.
“A soldier was moderately wounded due to the Israeli enemy targeting of a vehicle... at the Beit Yahun checkpoint” in Bint Jbeil district, an army statement said.
Beit Yahun is around eight kilometers (around five miles) from the border.
The health ministry said two people including a soldier were wounded in the strike, which it said was launched by an “Israeli enemy drone” and targeted a vehicle.
The Israeli army did not immediately comment on the reported strike.
Israel has continued to launch raids on its neighbor despite a November truce which sought to halt more than a year of hostilities with Hezbollah militants including two months of all-out war.
Lebanon has reported four deadly strikes this week in the south, with Israel saying it targeted Hezbollah operatives.
Under the ceasefire, the Iran-backed Hezbollah was to pull back its fighters north of Lebanon’s Litani River and dismantle any remaining military infrastructure to its south.
Israel was to withdraw all its forces from Lebanon, but it has kept troops in five areas that it deems “strategic.”
The Lebanese army has been deploying in the south as Israeli forces have withdrawn and has been dismantling Hezbollah infrastructure.
The truce was based on a United Nations Security Council resolution that says Lebanese troops and UN peacekeepers should be the only forces in south Lebanon, and calls for the disarmament of all non-state groups.
Last month, President Joseph Aoun said the army was deployed in more than 85 percent of the south, and that the sole obstacle to full control across the frontier area was “Israel’s occupation of five border positions.”
Also in April, Lebanon’s military said a munitions blast in the south killed three personnel, days after an explosion killed another soldier as the force was dismantling mines in a tunnel.