SEVEN WINTERS IN TEHRAN

Sept hivers à Téhéran

West Coast Premiere | Germany, France | 2022 | Documentary | 99 min | In Persian with English subtitles
Directed by: Steffi Niederzoll
Written by: Steffi Niederzoll, Sina Ataeian Dena
Produced by: Melanie Andernach, Knut Losen (Made in Germany Filmproducktion), Laurent Lavolé (Gloria Films Production), Milénia Polyo, Gilles Satuco, Céline Loiseau (TS Productions)
Cinematography: Julia Daschner
Film Editing: Nicole Kortlüke
Original Score: Flemming Nordkrog
International Sales: Cercamon

In July 2007, 19-year-old Iranian university student Reyhaneh Jabarri meets a surgeon who asks her to decorate his clinic. When they meet to discuss the prospective job, he attempts to rape her and she stabs him in self-defense… and is soon charged with murder. So begins Reyhaneh’s seven-year-journey through hell and back. Using secretly-filmed images and her letters from prison, Seven Winters in Tehran follows one family’s battle to save their daughter, taking us into the very heart of a corrupt criminal justice system, and revealing both the horror of living in a culture where women are routinely silenced, and the enormous risks faced by those who defend them. Through her courage, dignity and commitment, Reyhaneh grew to become a powerful international symbol of resistance and the struggle for women’s rights.

Born in Nuremberg, Germany, Steffi Niederzoll studied audiovisual media at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne and the Escuela Internacional de Cine y Televisión in Cuba. Her short films have screened at international festivals, and her medium-length film Lea (2008) was selected for the Perspektive Deutsches Kino section in Berlin. Seven Winters in Tehran, her first documentary feature, had its premiere at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, where it won both the Best Film award in the Compass-Perspektive section and the Peace Film Award. The film was also honored with the F:ACT Award at the CPH:DOX festival, the Activist Documentary Award at The Hague Movies that Matter Festival, the Best Film Unipol Award at the Biografilm Festival, and opened the Human Rights Watch Film Festival at Lincoln Center in May.