The Love Child

Prolific Iranian filmmaker and daughter of the legendary Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Samira believes love is the answer to fundamentalism

Samira Makhmalbaf made her first film called Apple at 18. It was based on the real instance of an old couple keeping their daughters caged in their home for almost 11 years. The family played themselves, and the script was written by Samira’s father, Mohsen Makhmalbaf. Each character, even the old man and his blind wife, are treated with tenderness. The old man feels the need to lock up his daughters as his blind wife can’t look out for them. The blind wife is paranoid about what lies outside, wilfully caged in the home herself.

After the neighbours complain and the welfare department steps in, the story gets blown out of proportion by the local media. The old man weeps as he reads articles that state he chained his daughters all the while. He didn’t chain them, he defends himself. He just locked them in their home to protect them from the dishonouring gaze of men. The incident gave the young director a chance to ‘carry out research on the issue of how much playing in the alleys and streets, which is the much exclusive prerogative of the boys, helps men became more social than these woman who do not have the chance to’, she says on her family’s website.

The film was unveiled at the Cannes film festival and went on to win many international awards. Astonished by the maturity of the work, some wondered whether her father had ghost directed the film. Five films and the prestigious Jury’s prize in the official competition section of Cannes (2000) later, there are no doubts that Samira has flourished not just because of her surname. She is a filmmaker, an individual and a visionary in her own right.

Although she may persuade you in her stopgap English that she is as ordinary as you, she isn’t. For starters, she has the rare ability to look at you and hold your gaze while she talks. Her sincerity towards the conversation doesn’t waver with silly questions like her impressions of India. Her answer, which includes questions to you, put you in a spot. “What makes India so different? Is it the different religions or cultures? And why are my family and my films so popular here?” she asks. You feel exposed by her gaze.

She dropped out of school at 15. “I have to tell you that I was a good student,” she says. “I believed in learning things, and got good marks. But there was something different about school and our home, the way our father behaved with us. In home, there was no difference between me and my brother, we had the same respect and freedom. Also, it was possible to ask questions. In school, everything had been asked before and the answers were ready.  There was no curiosity.”

So Samira began studying in another way. She learnt filmmaking under her father’s guidance and broke a cliché. In eastern cultures like hers, she explains, there are unwritten laws, not just written ones. According to unwritten laws, women can’t do most things. “The time that I made my first film, I just wanted to express the story of these two girls. I didn’t care that I am a woman. But after I did it, people said ‘Okay, a girl this age can make a film.’ Sometimes, you just have to break a cliché. And you just have to do it.”

Samira is in the habit of breaking clichés. Her latest film, Two-legged Horse, is a polemic of sorts that has left most of its audience in shock. It is an allegorical tale about a poor boy who’s been hired for a dollar-a-day to carry a lame boy around, like a mule. The relationship degenerates and the poor boy is slowly transformed from a human being into an animal. The script is written by her father, who has used the plot to reflect his relationship with the Iranian state. “I’m not criticising the characters, [but am] critiquing the situation which puts one person in power and another under pressure of power,” Samira says. She wants to know how far a relationship between two people can go, she writes on her website. On one hand, two people go all the way to the ultimate love, with true friendship and sacrifice for each other, and on the other, one exploits the other like an animal. Since she didn’t get permission to shoot in her homeland Iran,
she shot in Afghanistan. While shooting, someone attacked the sets with a bomb; a person and a horse were killed. But the Makhmalbafs were determined  to complete the film. On her website, she speaks of how she wanted to write on the movie theatre door that if you are here to watch a soft and poetic film, don’t waste your time. “Children are soft and poetic in literature, not in reality.”

Samira is out to break stereotypes. “In life, it just so happens that I’m a woman, daughter of a filmmaker in a Muslim country… I don’t want to live my life only as Samira, to see the world as narrowly as that.” It’s not easy to understand other perspectives without judging them, but that is precisely the challenge of sensitive filmmaking, even humanism at a greater level. “Through cinema, or culture or love, we can live wider,” she believes.

Years ago, she said that love is the answer to theocracy and fundamentalism in an interview with British newspaper The Guardian. At 30, her conviction is stronger. “It’s such a general abstract thing, but it’s true. When I make films, even at a time when I don’t believe what they believe, I still feel I can love them. That’s why I can forgive them.” Caught by the absurdity of what she’s trying to say, “I’m not Jesus,” she exclaims mid-sentence. “I’m a very normal person, you know!”

While you agree that the world could do with more love, you disagree with the latter part. Samira isn’t a normal individual. You see the comfort with which she poses for a group of cameras; looking directly at them, at times even pouting, and you realise that her eyes are the most striking part of her face. It is what makes her beautiful in a way actresses aren’t. When she looks at you, it doesn’t intimidate you, nor do you feel uncomfortable.

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