"I can say that I've become a Farah follower, but I'll never be a royalist."  -- Nahid Persson

Three decades after leaving her home country, Iranian filmmaker Nahid Persson Sarvestani decided to make a documentary about Iran's deposed Queen Farah: wife of the late Shah of Iran, who now lives in exile abroad.

The result is a fascinating encounter between two women with clashing political visions -- one a former revolutionary, the other a royalist -- who end up developing an improbable friendship.

Synopsis

In her award-winning documentary Prostitution Behind the Veil, about two Iranian prostitutes, Nahid Persson expressed fierce criticism on the position of women in her native country. This drove the Islamic regime to accuse the leftist documentary-maker of monarchist sympathies.



Whereas during the Iranian Revolution in the late seventies she helped depose the shah the Iranian king. In reaction to these reprimands, Nahid decides to make a film about the last Iranian queen Farah, who lives abroad, like herself.

This leads to a fascinating encounter of two women with clashing political visions, who develop an improbable friendship in the two years of their association. Nahid expressly appears on-screen together with the queen and in the voice-over tells about the problems she runs into.

For example, out of sympathy and for fear that the now 70-year-old Farah will refuse further cooperation, she does not really dare ask the queen any really confronting questions about the shah's heartless regime.

These are interesting reflections, which bring to light a number of dilemmas every documentary-maker contends with. In how far do you let your subjects impose their will on you? And to what extent do you comply with the image people want to create of themselves?

Cast:

Empress Farah  ...  Herself
Zinat S. Lloyd    ...  Narrator (voice)
Nahid Persson    ...  Herself



Producers synopsis

30 years after filmmaker Nahid Persson Sarvestani participated in the revolution to overthrow the Shah and the Monarchy regime in Iran, she finds herself still fascinated by the former queen whose fairytale life had intrigued her as a child. Disillusioned by the Islamic revolution that betrayed her trust and forced her into exile, Nahid Persson turns the focus to her new film to an unlikely subject: Farah Diba, the Shah's wife.

In the process of filming the antagonist of her revolutionary past for almost two years, Persson Sarvestani and her former enemy encounter frequent confrontations and revelations that evolve into an unforeseen journey of two women in exile, who have more in common than any of them could envision.

 

BBC: 30 years after the revolution in Iran and being forced into exile, the wife of the shah, Empress Farah Diba Pahlavi breaks her the silence. Swedish filmmaker Nahid Persson Sarvestani, the maker of the documentary "The Queen and I" which is based on the life of the queen and her family. The movie looks at aspects of their daily life, and political views after fact being out of the country for so long.


  The Queen and I (2008)