| Queen and I, The |
Nahid Pe rsson 90 minutes NOW AVAILABLE ON DVD! (included on the DVD is the short film Liberation.) When Nahid Persson Sarvestani, an Iranian exile, set out to make a documentary about Empress Farah Pahlavi, the wife of the Shah of Iran, she expected to encounter her opposite. As a child, Persson Sarvestani had lived in dire poverty, watching Pahlavi’s royal wedding as if it were a fairy tale. She joined the Communist faction of Khomeini’s revolution that deposed the Shah when she was a teenager, sending him and his family volleying from country to country. When Khomeini betrayed his promise for democracy, imposing even more violent measures, Persson Sarvestani was forced to flee as well. 30 years later, she needs key questions answered and goes directly to the source. Surprisingly, Empress Farah welcomes her as a fellow refugee from their beloved homeland, granting unprecedented access. Over the next year and a half, Persson Sarvestani enters the queen’s world, planning to challenge the shah’s ideology; instead, she must rethink her own. Iran’s former empress speaks out about unrest
“A remarkable collaboration between two Iranian women of radically different backgrounds who, in the making of this captivating, unexpected documentary, discover more common ground than either might ever have imagined.”
-Los Angeles Times |