Iran’s Revolutionary Court has sentenced filmmakers Behtash Sanaeeha and Maryam Moghaddam and producer Gholamreza Mousavi to 14 months behind bars on charges of propaganda against the Islamic Republic, as well as to one year of imprisonment on charges of “producing obscene content” with their award-winning film “Keyke mahboobe man” (or “My Favorite Cake”), which premiered at the Berlinale in 2024.
The court has ordered the confiscation of all film equipment, but both sentences will be suspended for five years, according to Iranian media outlets.
The film violates many taboos of the Iranian theocracy. “My Favorite Cake” tells the story of a 70-year-old widow living alone who rediscovers her desire for love. In her search for a partner, she meets a taxi driver. He visits her — unnoticed by the neighbors — in her house. The two have a brief, intense, tender encounter before the man dies of a heart attack and she buries him in the garden.
Big risks during filming
It is a quietly told, seemingly inconspicuous film full of small moments of happiness, peppered with humor and the hope of a human existence in freedom. However, the plot takes place veiled by a curtain of privacy, behind which many people in Iran have to retreat in order to escape the dictatorship of the mullahs.
In her apartment, protagonist Mahin (Lily Farhadpour) and her beau, Faramarz (Esmail Mehrabi), drink wine, they touch each other while dancing, they shower together and decide that the night should end together in Mahin’s bed. Scenes like this have been subject to strict censorship in Iran since the Islamic Revolution. Those who disregard them take great risks — like the directing duo Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha. “We knew the consequences,” said Maryam Moghaddam in an interview with the platform T-Online in 2024. But they wanted to risk it “to show the reality in Iran. We don’t want to lie; we want to be honest, whether it’s about women’s lives or people in general. We are proud of that.”
Reflecting Iranian women’s reality
A few days after shooting began, the death of Jina Mahsa Amini, who died in the custody of the morality police, was made public. While thousands of Iranians took to the streets, the film crew continued shooting in secret. In a staged scene in the film, the morality police arrest a young woman for allegedly not wearing her headscarf properly, just like Amini, whose death sparked nationwide protests. “We wrote this scene before Mahsa Amini was murdered,” reports Moghaddam. “It happens every day on the streets of Iran, in every city. We women have to pretend to be something we are not. We have to pretend to be religious. This also applies to women in films and series. But that’s not who we are.”
Filmmakers barred from leaving Iran
Portraying a woman on screen without a hijab is forbidden in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Even before they could leave Iran for post-production, Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha had to surrender their passports, making it impossible for them to leave the country. They were only able to complete their film remotely with the production team, who were based abroad. Unlike their main actors, the filmmakers were also not allowed to travel to Germany for the premiere of “My Favorite Cake” at the 2024 Berlinale. However, their film was acclaimed by the audience and won a critics’ award.
Since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, Iran’s film and cultural scene has also been subjected to strict monitoring by the authorities. Filmmakers, for example, must officially apply for their filming permits and cinema screenings through the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance. However, Iran’s lively art and film scene has always been a place of either subtle or open criticism of the system. This has been demonstrated not least by Mohammad Rasoulof’s film “The Seeds of the Sacred Fig Tree,” which is shortlisted as Germany’s submission for Best International Feature Film at the upcoming Academy Awards in Los Angeles.
This article was originally written in German and was first published on February 16, 2025. It was updated following the sentence on April 9.
