LAFF ‘09: Tehran to Los Angeles

Iranian-Americans in Los Angeles support their countrymen
(Photo by: Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

It was probably a coincidence because a similar rally occurred in San Diego, but a Los Angeles Film Festival screening of the upcoming film The Stoning of Soraya M. unfolded just down the street from a rally led by Los Angeles’ large Iranian-American community in support of their countrymen who are protesting the sham election victory of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The LA Times reports there were over a thousand people dressed in green waving red, white and green Iranian flags on the corners of Veteran and Wilshire boulevards in Westwood.

The already thick Saturday traffic slowed to a crawl and there was plenty of honking in support as I drove in around noon. The street corners were still crowded with enthusiastic supporters when I left at 11 PM.

I’d already seen the film about the stoning to death of a young Iranian wife wrongfully accused of adultery by her husband (you can read more about it here) so I screened something else, but I’d have liked to hear the post-film discussion with LAFF guest artist Khaled Hosseini (author of The Kite Runner), Iranian writer and scholar Reza Aslan, the film’s director Cyrus Nowrasteh and the star of the film Shohreh Aghdashloo (House of Sand and Fog). Luckily, Amy Kaufman has a decent recap in The Wrap.

About the practice of stoning itself, Aslan said, “The issue at hand is really more about the way woman get treated – not religion, but women’s rights. We’re talking about cultural practices, no religion, because there is no such thing as religion separated from culture.”

Regarding the protests in Iran, the Afghanistan born Hossein said, “The uprising has a lot more to it than Ahmadinejad. This is years of frustration from a sophisticated society of people finally breaking open.”

According to Aghdashloo,  “Whatever happens, Iran won’t be the same after this. My friends inside the country are telling me this looks like the 1979 year of revolution. We’re at the dawn of democracy with more transparency where it’s dialogues coming out instead of monologues coming down.”

The harrowing The Stoning of Soraya M. opens in limited release Friday, June 27th.

Filed under: Film Festivals
Tags: Cyrus Nowrasteh, Khaled Hosseini, LAFF, Los Angeles Film Festival, Reza Aslan, Shohreh Aghdashloo, The Stoning of Soraya M.