A Movie by Arash Riahi

A look back on a cinema evening on October 5th 2011 in the Odeon movie theater in Cologne by a viewer:

The only information I had about Riahi and his “Exile Family Movie” on that night was that its general topic of an exile family and a reunion of different family members in Mecca – something I could hardly imagine.

I was still born in Iran myself, but am now living in Germany with my parents and my brother for about 25 years. We also belonged / still do belong to the group of political refugees and were also exile Iranians. Even though I was quite young at the time we left our country, I still know what it means to live in exile and most of all to live apart from the majority of your family, your grandparents, aunts, uncles and whom, by the time, you will end up knowing only by telephone, videos, photos and mails. Finally I also know how it feels to live in between two different worlds, to have grown up in Europe, have enjoyed its freedoms and to be used to that kind of life but to still be ‘different’ in a certain way.

All these things came back to my mind that night when I was watching the movie. By presenting a lot of images and recordings of his life and his family, Riahi managed to show the audience how difficult it must have been to be separated from your whole family, especially for the first generation of emigrants, the generation of our parents.

 

 

There were quite a few scenes where certainly not just the people sitting in my row had to cry badly: scenes where letters from relatives in Iran are being read in tears, where funeral videos are seen and pictures of deceased relatives are shown, to whom you could not say goodbye since you were not there. I repeatedly realized how difficult it must have been for my parents at that time, as there were so many things shown that were also true for my family. Speaking for myself, it was the role of Riahi’s sister in the movie with whom I felt associated most. She was the one representing the wide gap between the two cultures – the Western one where she grew up in and the Persian one that was mostly still practiced by her relatives still living in Iran. On the one hand she was absolutely unable to understand so many things regarding the behavior of her relatives that she just recently got to know. On the other hand she seemed to have some kind of a close relationship to them since all the things happening around her touched and moved her very strongly.

So it was quite surprising that despite all the emotional and heartbreaking scenes, Riahi also managed to make us laugh as well. And when I say laughing, I am talking about a hearty, loud, Persian laughter! Especially by showing typical characteristics and differences between all the relatives, he made the whole audience go crazy. Just take his aunt as an example who is living in the United States and more or less acting as if she would be part of a soap opera. And also Arash’s father who compares the struggle to open up a jar with a “war” against society. Or Arash himself interviewing his grandparents and listening to his grandmother who tries to make her husband believe that the only reason they got married was simply her.

I have rarely ever left a cinema and have felt deeply touched and amused at the same time. And even though Riahi made it clear in his interview, that just by watching the movie you do not know his whole family, you still had gained a strong sympathy towards them and wanted to get to learn a little more about them as well.

The nicest part of the evening was to be reminded of your own heritage, your own family and the great luck to have such an extended family that is able to stick so closely together like the single fingers of your hand despite all the differences and new cultures influencing them.

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