Director, DP, and Editor: Tara Violet Niami

Translation by Sholeh Wolpe

Based on feminist Iranian poet Forugh Farrokhzad’s poem “Sin”, this short film captures the powerful sensual experience of the poem’s female narrator. The monochromatic imagery displaces the film from current times, taking inspiration instead from art house cinema of the early 1960’s.
I wanted to explore the conflict between pleasure and guilt that Iranian women have for decades felt; society has told them that their sexual desire is sinful and that they must repress this desire. I find it important as an Iranian American woman, to give a voice to these women. Forugh Farrokhzad’s work beautifully depicts this turmoil and is empowering. Although her work was written more than 50 years ago, the influence of her vision remains relevant in feminism and notions of womanhood too, and continues to inspire.