“The Green Wave” screenings in Israel - Democracy

The Heinrich Böll Foundation’s Israel office sponsored the Israel premiere of „The Green Wave“, Germany 2010, directed by Ali Samadi Ahadi  – a renowned documentary about the uprising in Iran following the presidential elections of 2009. The premier took place  at this year's Jerusalem Film Festival on July 11, 2011 and was screened twice more during the international film festival in Jerusalem, where it received an honorable mention by the festival jury. An additional screening in Tel Aviv followed.

The film is a documentary about the optimistic run-up to the elections of 2009 and its aftermath, an election campaign holding a promise for a profound change for Iran: a leadership shift from the ultra-conservative leader Mahmoud Ahmedinejad to the liberal considered candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi. But the elections were supposedly rigged and Ahmedinejad stayed in power. The rallies that supported Mousavi before the elections brought thousands of young citizens to the streets, expressing enthusiastically their demands for democracy, rights, and a more liberal structure of the political system. After Ahmnedinejad was announced as the elections winner, the ongoing rallies, that turned into a demand for an answer to the question: “Where is my vote?”, were broken down brutally by the military and more than 4000 people were arrested, beaten and tortured the following week, among them journalists, political activists and demonstrators - predominantly young people.

As it is nearly impossible to enter Iran in order to obtain relevant materials - particularly documentation of political and military actions, the film director, Ali Samadi Ahadi, collected materials from the protesters themselves, as they had published on the Internet mostly on social networks such as twitter, facebook and youtube. Out of this authentic material he created a documentary in an innovative format, mixed these videos and messages with a story shown in part as animation, as well as interviews with exiled activists, journalists and scholars. Among them are the journalist Mitra Khalatbari who fled to Germany as a result of the events, Mehdi Mohseni who is an independent journalist and blogger, the Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr. Shirin Ebadi, and Prof. Dr. Payam Akhavan, the founder of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Centre in the US.

The film finally gives acknowledgment and recognition not only to the Green Wave revolutionaries, but rather to the people living in Iran that are too often overlooked due to the international community’s focus on the political affairs of Iran’s nuclear program. All the videos, pictures and texts Ahadi collected and composed into a film are gaining status as historical documents – not only as evidence of the violations of human rights and the brutality of the regime and the military, but they also serve as authentic testimonies of the bravery and the anger of the demonstrating people.

In his first public appearance in Israel, the recently appointed German Ambassador to Israel, Andreas Michaelis, opened the screening, and Dr. Eldad J. Pardo of the Harry S. Truman Institute (Hebrew University of Jerusalem), a renowned expert on Iran, introduced the film with an overview of Iranian cinema. All screenings in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv were followed by lively discussions with the producer Jan Krüger and Dr. Eldad Pardo on the impact of the Green Revolution on the recent Arab uprisings, and its meaning for Israel’s relations with Iran. These complicated and complex relations and their history contributed to the special perception of the documentary by the Israeli audience.

Despite the moving and disturbing story of the film, the audience addressed issues especially regarding the situation of the Iranian population and the current state of the Green Wave Movement. The audience wanted to know about the perception of the film in Iran and the possibility of change in the Islamic Republic. The discussion also brought to the surface the different perceptions and meanings of the events for Germany and Israel.

The Heinrich Böll Foundation provided seed funding to the film’s production and carried out discussions at various screenings in multiple festivals. “The Green Wave” premiered at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam in November 2010 and was the only German entry to the 2010 Sundance Film Festival in the US. It received the „Vaclav Havel“ and „Best Director“ Awards at the One World Human Rights Film Festival in Prague, the „Audience Award“ at the International FilmFest in Washington DC and the „Youth Jury Award“ at Human Rights Watch Festival Genf.

Additional screenings in Israel are currently planned for October and November 2011. 

By Magdalena Herzog, Heinrich Böll Foundation

For more information on the film click here.