Art House: Sepideh is a film about an Iranian girl who wants to be an astronaut
Director-scriptwriter Berit Madsen's opens with a chador-clad figure trudging up a hill with a large telescope; she's heading towards an unfinished observatory, the construction of which began before the film's titular character was born.
Iranian schoolgirl Sepideh Hooshyar has an uncommon passion for the stars, and dreams of becoming an astronomer, if not an astronaut. Interested in celestial objects since the age of 12, the teenager regularly goes out on night expeditions with members of the mixed-gender astronomy club, founded by the physics teacher who wanted to build an observatory overlooking the small provincial city of Saadat Shahr.
The young sky watchers have interesting and commendable reasons for going on their astronomy trips. "We use the sky to vent the frustration society gives us," says one. "You can find more peace and tranquility [in astronomy] than in other sciences," says another. As Babak Tafreshi's stellar cinematography and time-lapse photography show, it supplies beauty as well.
But some of the residents of the city in the Islamic republic's conservative south feel that young females should not be staying out late at night; doing so puts their lives and good name unnecessarily at risk. Even though Sepideh aspires to make it big in astronomy and go far in life to honour her deceased father, her widowed mother would be happier if she took the more conventional route of learning how to cook, and marrying a good man.
A filmmaker with a graduate degree in ethnography and social anthropology, Madsen worked on films in Nepal, Niger, the Caribbean and in her native Denmark before embarking on this documentary project in her husband's homeland.
Attracted to the subject matter because she considers it far removed from what people normally associate with Iran, Madsen has taken a non-judgmental approach. She presents the girl's point of view, of course, but also includes the viewpoints of her worried mother, concerned uncle and the physics teacher who loves astronomy but knows what it's like to have personal dreams subsumed by family responsibilities.
Some viewers may look upon this documentary, which screened at Sundance and the Human Rights Watch Film Festival, as showing the trials of a young female in a sexist society. Others will see as an inspirational tale about a girl who dares to dream.
Madsen views her film as being more about the changes that are coming to, and have already have come, to Iran. After all, tells the story of a strong-willed and confident Iranian teenager who is inspired by the first Iranian in space, Anousheh Ansari, who also happens to have been the world's first ever female private space explorer.
