Diamond & Narcissus - الماس و نرگس

“A human does not arrive in the world as a blank slate. It carries within its very being the history of its ancestors.”

This short film created by Negin Rezaie and Barbara Wolfram does not simply speak to the wave of protests that swept Iran after the murder of Zhina Mahsa Amini in September of 2022. It also reappraises and bears mutual witness to the exploration of a shared family history and anguishing experience that reaches to the present day. The film employs elliptical and poetic imagery to conjure a story told in a cursory manner about individual experiences intertwined with the collective reality that resulted in the far reaching movement whose rally cry is, "ژن، ژیان، ئازادی - Jin, Jiyan, Azadî": Woman, Life, Freedom! It explores how generational trauma indelibly inscribes people's psyches and bodies. Experiences of violence impact subsequent generations, persisting as unconscious signals that are passed on. The film poses the question: How can we emerge from a past marked by pain and trauma to create a more liberated and hopeful future?!

A signal, a flashing lantern in an empty hall. Two bare feet in the sand. “I see how time flows away without me,” says a woman's voice. Two women – a mother and daughter or perhaps sisters – enter the scene. They embody a glimpse of freedom, of anger, of protest, and of solidarity. A memory. “No echo for the screams here.” It is said narcissus flowers blossom at the entrance to the underworld.

This short film is a compelling poem – a fragment, a fraction, a mosaic, an echo of the collective unconscious: We are not alone. A different future is possible. (Constanze Ruhm)

Translation: Eve Heller