How Dare You Have Such a Rubbish Wish

• Mania Akbari
• 72 min
• United Kingdom, Iran
• 2022
• Documentary

An illustrative and indispensable film story about liberation, exploitation, and oppression of Iran’s women, based on clips from a large number of forbidden films.

The artist, filmmaker, actor, and Göteborg favorite Mania Akbari, most recently at the festival with A Moon for My Father (2020), continues to reclaim her own body. Here, she also reclaims many other Iranian actresses’ bodies. In a collage of clips from films made from the silent-film era up until the Revolution in 1979, we meet dancing, infatuated, lightly dressed, and intoxicated women. All filmed from a male perspective, and characterized by oppression even during the relative free years just before the Revolution. In light of the last year’s events in Iran, Akbari’s courageous and uncompromising film essay gives us new and decisive takes on the oppression of Iranian women throughout history and today.

* The screening on January 31 will be followed by a Directors Talk, a longer conversation with Mania Akbari.

- Johan Blomqvist

• Experimentell
• Film om film
• Dokumentär
• Historia
• Konst