ifilm's exclusive report on Iranian feature ‘Motherland’

Watch ifilm's exclusive report on the Iranian feature film ‘Motherland’ directed by Abolhassan Davoudi, starring Roya Teimourian and Masoud Rayegan.

The following are highlights of the report.

Davoudi: The initial idea was proposed by Reza Mir-Karimi after he had seen ‘Intersection’ and liked it a lot.

One day, he called me and said that he has a proposal that he wanted me to work on...

I liked the main theme of the idea. I recorded his voice when he was talking about his idea.

Later on, I along with Farid Mostafavi began writing the screenplay.

ifilm: Sometimes, real couples that play the role of a couple in a movie, for some actors it is difficult, but for others it’s easy.

Davoudi: There were some scenes in the film where they had to touch each other because they are a couple.

There is even a scene in which the wife bathes her husband because he’s become temporarily crippled due to a coma.

Accordingly, in those scenes we had to comply with the rules of the cinema industry of Iran and we needed a couple to play those scenes so that they’d be able to touch each other without violating the rules.

ifilm: This is the last movie Ezzatollah Entezami has appeared in and we wish he good luck for this great Iranian actor.

Davoudi: When I began writing the screenplay with Farid, Ezzatollah Entezami was the one who I had in my mind specifically to definitely work with.

When I gave him the screenplay, he liked it a lot. He tried his best and worked on it as much as he could...

The notes he had written under each page were double as many as the main text related to the role he was supposed to take on.

The main subject of the film is based on a true event.

A researcher called Bijan Dareshouyee had worked on protecting the Hawksbill sea turtle for years in Qeshm which are on the verge of extinction.

Most scenes in which Roya Teimourian plays are the real stories of him.

After he started doing his research, people forced him to leave Qeshm by making his work hard and he had to go and stay in Shiraz.

He’s still living in Shiraz. So some parts were based on real events and some parts which are related to the turtles are real.

AI/AG