CINEMA+CONTEXT

Fereshteh studies and works in Tehran and has a two-month-old baby. When her parents call in for a spontaneous visit, Fereshteh’s well-kept secret is in danger of being exposed. For her parents know nothing about her illegitimate child.
Fereshteh sees no other way out than to take her baby somewhere else for a night. With the help of her friend Atefeh, she embarks on an odyssey through Tehran in search of a trustworthy person who is willing to take in her baby for a night. But this seems more difficult than initially thought.
Told over the course of a day, director Ali Asgari’s film impressively shows what it can mean for people in Iran to live outside traditional family structures and how an intrepid generation circumvents the Islamic legal system despite heavy repression.

The director Ali Asgari is a prominent representative of Iranian cinema and has been awarded more than 200 prizes so far. Two of his short films were nominated for the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and THE BABY screened in the short film competition at the Venice Film Festival 2014. Asgari’s films deal with the precarious living conditions in Iran. His debut feature DISAPPEARANCE was developed as part of the Cinefondation Residency at the Festival de Cannes and had its world and North American premieres at the Venice International Film Festival and the 2017 Toronto Film Festival. Asgari is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
TA FARDA is his second feature film and premiered at the 2022 Berlinale.

Before the film screening: Revolutionary songs by the Com Chor Berlin and panel with Amina Aziz and Sham Jaff on revolutionary movements in Iran and Kurdistan, moderated by Ozi Ozar.

The Com Chor Berlin stands for „Community Choir“ and was founded in Berlin on 2 April 2013. The Com Chor Berlin is (still) the only choir for black people, indigenous people and people of colour in Germany. The choir was created out of the desire, on the one hand, to make music in a sophisticated way and without sheet music and, on the other hand, to promote the networking of BIPoC communities. BIPoC authors are sung.

Ozi Ozar, born in Tehran, is a queer artist living in Berlin and Frankfurt am Main. Ozi studied theatre and film directing in Tehran and dramaturgy in Frankfurt. Ozi’s artistic approach revolves around comedy, interactive theatre and the translation of social media functions into theatre and vice versa, focusing on the discourse of identity politics, digitalisation and queerness. As a multidisciplinary freelancer, Ozi has experience as a director, dramaturg, translator, graphic and web designer, performer and social media entertainer. Since August 2020, Ozi has been archiving and collecting all the TikToks you should know and publishing their curated versions every Sunday on Instagram under the project name SunTok.
Ozi is a member of the Woman* Life Freedom Collective from Berlin.

Amina Aziz works as a freelance journalist, author and presenter, for example for ARD Kultur, Missy Magazin and taz. Aziz studied Islamic Studies with a focus on Iran in Hamburg, Tehran and Damascus and was a research assistant in politics after her studies.

Sham Jaff is a journalist and political scientist. She was born in Kurdistan, Iraq, and grew up in Germany. After studying political science and economics at the University of Nuremberg-Erlangen, she started the English-language newsletter What happened last week in 2014, which was subscribed to by more than 14,000 (15,000) people from more than 100 countries. In 2020, Jaff was nominated for the CIVIS Audio Media Award for her podcast Wir schaffen das – Wie ein Satz Deutschland veränderte, and in 2021 she was a Grimme Online Award winner for her podcast 190220 – Ein Jahr nach Hanau. Jaff lives in Berlin.

CINEMA+CONTEXT is curated by Tara Afsah, Lilian Pfeuffer and Raquel Kishori Dukpa. The focus is on films and their contextualisation from a decolonial and intersectional feminist perspective.

Tara Afsah was born in Berlin-Kreuzberg in 1990. She studied at the University of the Arts with a focus on media theory, film and audiovisual communication. She works as a filmmaker, is part of the story development department at Komplizen Film and does live camera and video for theatre productions, including at Ballhaus Ost, Kosmos Theater in Vienna, Festspiele am Plötzensee and Schauspielhaus Graz. In March 2020, together with Lilian Pfeuffer, she founded the event series CINEMA+CONTEXT, which takes place regularly at the Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz. Since September 2020, Tara has been working at Komplizen Film in story development for cinema and series.

Lilian Pfeuffer was born in Berlin in 1989. She has worked freelance for various film production and distribution companies as well as for the association „Pro Quote Film“. She gained festival experience at the Berlinale as well as at the Max Ophüls Preis, where she chaired the film festival’s co-production meeting in 2017 and 2018 and curated themed panels as part of the industry programme MOP-Industry. In early 2020, she co-founded the CINEMA+CONTEXT event series with Tara Afsah. Lilian has also been working part-time for film press agency Media Office since 2019, as well as doing freelance target group work for feature films (e.g. FUTUR DREI) for theatrical release.

Raquel Kishori Dukpa grew up in Berlin-Kreuzberg. She studied in Hildesheim with a focus on film, queer feminist theory and popular culture. She has been part of JÜNGLINGE since 2016 and participated as casting director, in the production, as well as in the research of their joint debut film Futur Drei. She is the editor of the catalogue I See You – Gedanken zum Film Futur Drei (published by edition assemblage) and was the author of the sixth season of the youth series Druck (ZDF/ funk). Based on Nancy Wang Yuen’s reflections on typecasting, she deals with structures that evoke typecasting.