‘Living can be passive. Witnessing is not passive.’ How do you fight a regime with absolute power? Why do they exist? What right do they have to not only dictate but actively terrorise the lives of others? These are just some of the lamentable questions for our present moment that make me ashamed of my humanity, the fact that we still have to fight these battles on a daily basis, and worse: that we seem to be losing. In the Streets of Tehran is one woman’s testimony of the courage, suffering and hope of women fighting for their freedom and their very lives in modern Iran.
It is a witness statement of Iran in 2023, of what started as ‘desperate witnesses testifying to a murder’ that quickly became the largest challenge to Iran’s theocratic dictatorship in 44 years. Zan, Zendegi, Azadi. Woman. Life. Freedom. Filled with history, myth and poetry, and burning with defiance, passion and hope, In the Streets of Tehran is the story of just one woman doing what she can. What if we all just did what we can?