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EXCLUSIVE: Totem has acquired international sales rights to Iranian director and women’s rights activist Mahnaz Mohammadi’s timely drama Roya ahead of its world premiere at the Berlinale next month.
The drama, made under the radar by Mohammadi, revolves around a teacher imprisoned for her political beliefs and facing the choice of making a forced televised confession, or remaining confined to her three-square-metre cell. Turkish actress Melisa Sözen (Winter Sleep, The Bureau) stars.
News on Wednesday of the film’s selection for the Berlinale’s Panorama sidebar comes amid a confused picture out of Iran, where pro-democracy protests against the country’s authoritarian Islamic Republic regime continue despite a tough crackdown, which is reported to have resulted in the deaths of at least 2,400 protestors and the arrest of another 18,000 people, who could now face execution.
Roya is Mohammadi’s second fiction feature after Son-Mother, about a destitute widow who is offered an arranged marriage that will take her out of poverty but separate her from her young son. The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2019 and went on to play at numerous other festivals.
Mohammadi cut her directing teeth with the 2003 documentary Women Without Shadow, capturing the lives of abandoned women living in a state-run shelter.
In 2010, she contributed to Rakhshan Bani-Etemad’s on We are Half of Iran’s Population about the lives of ordinary women and their campaign for female suffrage in the lead up to the 2009 presidential elections.
Her subsequent works included Travelogue, revolving around conversations with passengers on the 57-hour train journey between the Iranian capital of Tehran and the Turkish capital of Ankara.
She accompanied the film to a screening in France in 2010 but has not been allowed to leave Iran since, with the government refusing to grant her permission to attend the Cannes Film Festival in 2011 for the premiere of Reza Serkanian’s Marriage Ephemeral in which she was the lead actress.
Mohammadi has been in and out of the crosshairs of Iran’s authoritarian Islamic Republic regime over the past two decades.
She was first arrested in March 2007 for protesting the trial of five women’s rights activists, and was then among a group of people arrested in August 2009, including Jafar Panahi, as she laid a wreath on the grave of Neda Agha Soltan. The 26-year-old woman became a symbol of protests against the re-election of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, after her killing by a government sniper was captured on a phone and went viral.
In July 2011, Mohammadi was arrested again on charges of working for the BBC, Al Jazeera, Radio France and Voice of America, which she denied, and being involved in a plot against state security, for which she was sentenced to five years in Iran’s notorious Evin prison.
Made underground, without official permission, Roya marks Mohammadi’s return to narrative cinema.
It is lead produced by Farzad Pak at Hamburg-based PakFilm in coproduction with Europe Media Nest (Czech Republic) and Amour Fou (Luxembourg).
“Roya is a film that must be heard before it can speak. From the very beginning, Totem understood the film. Our collaboration grew out of a shared sensitivity towards silence, time, and truth,” said Mohammadi.
Paris-based sales company Totem has a strong track record in collaborating with Iranian directors having previously worked on directorial duo Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha’s 2024 drama My Favourite Cake, and their previous film, Ballad of a White Cow.
“Roya is such a distinctive and powerful film. We are honoured that Mahnaz chose Totem to stand alongside her. We deeply admire her vision, sharpness, and resistance,” said the Totem team.
The company’s current slate also includes Venice Lion of the Future winner Short Summer by Nastia Korkia; Locarno entries Fantasy by Kukla and Donkey Days by Rosanne Pel; Karlovy Vary Best Director winner The Visitor by Vytautas Katkus and Cotton Queen by Suzannah Mirghani from Venice Critics’ Week.
Totem also heads to the Berlinale with Anna Roller’s second feature Allegro Pastell, which also premieres in the Panorama section, as well as her third feature in development, Manatee, which will participate in the Berlinale Co-Production Market.
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