Twenty one-year-old Iranian director Hana Makhmalbaf brings the bloody street protests that followed June's presidential vote to the big screen in a film looking at the hopes and frustrations of the country's youth, Reuters reported.
"Green Days" focuses on the run-up to the election on the streets of Tehran and features interviews with ordinary young people, mostly supporters of opposition candidate Mirhossein Mousavi.
The film blends fictional elements with raw footage of the swelling protests by Mousavi's green-clad sympathisers after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared winner, and their brutal repression by security forces.
Some of the images were shot with mobile phones by the demonstrators, as the government imposed restrictions on independent and foreign media.
One shows the death of Neda Agha-Soltan, the young woman who became a symbol of the protests. Makhmalbaf's father Mohsen, a respected director, is now Mousavi's spokesman abroad and she said she had to leave Iran after the vote because the government wanted to arrest her.
She finished editing the film at a secret location in Italy to avoid Iranian censorship.
"Ahmadinejad can force me out of Iran, he can force foreign media out of Iran, but he can't force out all the Nedas in Iran and those who think like Neda," Makhmalbaf told Reuters in an interview, speaking through an interpreter. "Green Days" is openly critical of the Iranian president, whom Mousavi's supporters accuse of stealing the election, but it does not glorify opposition leaders past and present.
"This is not a propagandistic film, made to support someone in particular. I also show a minority of people supporting Ahmadinejad to give them a chance to explain things, even if I don't believe them," said Makhmalbaf, wearing a green scarf.
"I wanted to show the reality of what is happening in Iran ... the hopes people had in those days."
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