Elsewhere Art House presents

For Freedom

A film by Mazyar Mahan · 2022 · Short film · 6 min

Synopsis

A solo dance for Woman, Life, Freedom.

A dancer performs a solo work in honor of Iran’s Woman, Life, Freedom movement. Through movement, stillness, and embodied memory, the performance pays tribute to women who resisted state violence and turned their bodies into sites of grief, defiance, and political expression.

Director’s statement

I made For Freedom in the months after Mahsa (Jina) Amini’s death, when “Woman, Life, Freedom” was being shouted in the streets of Iran and echoed around the world. From far away, I felt the need to respond not with an argument but with a gesture.

Shahrzad Hamzeh’s solo moves from confinement to open ground: against a wall, on the gravel, and finally into the trees, turning. Her body becomes the place where grief and defiance meet, as it did for so many women who took off their scarves and danced in public at great risk.

For Freedom is a tribute to them. It is small, as tributes are, but I wanted it to carry some of their courage forward.

— Mazyar Mahan

Stills