My Iranian Paradise (Mit Iranske Paradis) (2008)

About

My Iranian Paradise (Mit Iranske Paradis) (2008) Directed by: Annette Mari Olsen & Katia Forbert Petersen Date of birth: 1947, Denmark Country: Denmark Language: Farsi / Danish Runtime: 78 minutes Released: 2008 Genre: Documentary

My Iranian Paradise A personal, creative documentary about the connections between Iran and the Western world, seen through the eyes of ordinary people. The director lived in Persia, present day Iran, for the first 22 years of her life. For her, it was the happiest place under the sun â today it is included in Bushâs âAxis of Evilâ. Compelled to draw a line from the past to the present, she travels back to Iran.

Through recent footage from the closed and inaccessible country and an abundance of rare and unique historical footage, the film uses the personal story of the director to illustrate not only aspects of present day Iran but also a crucial part in the countryâs history â the time up to the Islamic Revolution, just as oil began to play its part in history. Understanding past Iran will expose the present. My Iranian Paradise depicts a peopleâs condition in the shade of politics â and in the light of history.

Annette Mari Olsen

Directors: Katia Forbert Petersen & Annette Mari Olsen Producers: Annette Mari Olsen, Karen Hjort & Katia Forbert Petersen

Produced by: Sfinx Film/TV with the support of: The Danish Film Institute, Nordic Film- and TV foundation, Images of the Middle East, The MEDIA Programme (EU Development & EU Broadcast funding) & DR. In association with: YLE, TVP, LRT, ETV & BHT.

Duration: 58 min. & feature (75-85 min.) Year of Production: 2008 Original Title: Mit Iranske Paradis Release: September 2008

My Iranian Paradise is a personal film about Iranian history and Persian culture by a Danish filmmaker who spent most of her childhood and youth in Tehran. Annette Mari Olsen relates the grand narrative through small stories, as always in close collaboration with co-director Katia Forbert Petersen. The two have teamed up in Danish documentaries for more than 20 years around a shared ambition to promote understanding and build bridges between cultures.

The two women filmmakers first met in Poland, at the film school in Lodz, in the early seventies, and later hooked up again in Denmark.

Katia Forbert Petersen originally fled Poland with her parents in the late sixties and has since, mainly lived in Denmark, working as a photographer, director and producer.

The child of a Danish-Polish couple who met in Iran, Annette Mari Olsen lived 22 years in Iran in her childhood and youth. After years of preparation, she has now made a film about her former homeland, My Iranian Paradise. Since starting Sfinx Film in 1988, the two filmmakers, who mainly speak Polish in the office,have produced a variety of stories about people living in the modern, multicultural reality.

A significant vision for Sfinx Film/TVâs productions, they say, is promoting insight into and understanding of what happens when people from different cultures meet. They know it from their own lives, and say, smiling, âInsight and understanding, thatâs what we hope our new film will give the audience.â

Human-made No record of this work says a model made it. What this means.