TEHRAN (AFP)
For the past four years, veteran director Behrouz Afkhami has been working on one of the most imposing projects that could be imagined in modern Iran.
He has been directing the first feature film about the life of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the charismatic cleric who led the Islamic revolution of 1979 that toppled the pro-U.S. shah and then ruled the country for a decade.
The film -- Farzand-e Sobh (The Morning's Child) -- is set to be released in Iran in February during the official celebrations for the 30th anniversary of the Islamic revolution.
Carefully avoiding the approach of an all-out biographical epic, the film focuses on Khomeini's childhood in his parents' home in the central city of Khomein, with a few glimpses of him returning from seminary studies in Arak.
But it also includes flash-forwards to Khomeini's sermons railing against the rule of shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in the 1960s which led to his arrest by the notorious SAVAK secret police and exile from Iran.
"I still consider myself the imam's disciple," Afkhami told AFP in an interview. Almost two decades after his death in 1989, Khomeini is still universally referred to as the "Imam".
He said the film was suggested by the institute charged with promoting Khomeini's work.
"But I refused at first since they expected of me to do a film on the time of Khomeini's leadership because this is not possible," he said, without elaborating.
"Then they gave me the authority to make the film on any period of Imam's life."
"This is a mood film -- a film that you do not see but you feel." |
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"I won't run away" Exclusive preview excerpts shown to AFP by Afkhami show that actor Abdol Reza Akbari has captured an almost perfect resemblance to Khomeini at the time of his agitation against the shah.
One section shows the day in June 1963 when Khomeini was arrested by the SAVAK after giving a speech denouncing the shah in Iran's clerical nerve centre of Qom.
-- "It is time for evening prayer. Stop the car I want to pray," Khomeini asks the SAVAK agent as their car whisks him towards prison in Tehran.
-- "Sorry, but we cannot stop."
-- "You are afraid that I may escape. No I won't run away," retorts Khomeini.
Another section shows the young Khomeini in Khomein sitting in a horse-drawn carriage, going home after finishing his elementary seminary school studies.
"The product is my brainchild," said Afkhami, insisting that the movie does not contain "anything which is contrary to history."
Such is the film's attention to detail that Akbari has been dubbed to ensure the picture faithfully replicates Khomeini's famously rustic provincial dialect.
"Imam's dialect is very important thus we are using dubbing. The voice is very important, the most important element of the film's character."
The film's completion comes at a time when a large percentage of Iran's predominantly youthful population were too young to have even been born when Khomeini was alive.
There have also been bitter arguments about his legacy, with the most prominent descendant -- grandson Hassan Khomeini -- virulently attacked by hardliners earlier this year on the eve of parliamentary elections.
The year 2009 will mark the 20th anniversary of the death of Khomeini, the man who within the briefest of periods took Iran from the pro-Western outlook of the shah to an Islamic state.
The 10 years of his rule from 1979-1989 were themselves of historic importance as ties with the United States were ruptured and Iran fought an eight-year war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
"More than 70 percent of the population has changed (since the revolution) and do not have any tangible memory" of Khomeini, Afkhami said.
The film has the full blessing of Hassan Khomeini, who oversees the late leader's gigantic shrine outside Tehran. Afkhami said Hassan Khomeini "helped me all the way, without setting any conditions". |
