In Conversation with Raha Shirazi: Director and Writer of A War on Women

 ROME -- Following a screening of A War on Women at Cinema Nuovo Sacher in Rome, director and writer Raha Shirazi spoke with the Italian Insider about representation, activism, social media, memory, and the meaning of courage. 

Representation, Unity, and Activism

 Q: During the Q&A at Nuovo Sacher with Nanni Moretti, you made an important point about representation: that no one person can speak for all Iranian women—or all Iranians. One of the film's strengths is that it brings together many distinct voices without reducing them to a single story. How did making the film shape your understanding of unity within a movement? Did it change the way you think about activism and collective action? 

 Raha Shirazi: That’s a very important point, and something I was very aware of while making the film. I don’t think it’s possible, or even right, to try to speak for all Iranian women, or all Iranians. What I could do was create a space where different voices and experiences could exist next to each other, without forcing them into one single narrative.
 Making this film really changed how I think about unity. It’s not about everyone being the same, or sharing the exact same experience. What I saw is that people can be very different, come from different generations, different social backgrounds, and still be connected through a shared desire for freedom.
 That difference is not a weakness, it’s actually what gives the movement strength. The fact that these voices remain distinct is what keeps it alive.
 It also changed how I think about activism. We often imagine activism as something very visible and collective, but I came to understand that it can take many forms. It can be public, but it can also be quiet, personal, and lived in everyday choices.
 What matters is not that it looks the same, but that there is a connection between these different forms. And I think that connection is what allows a movement to continue over time.

Social Media, Memory, and Resistance

 Q: Social media plays a central role in the film, particularly through the activist movement of White Wednesdays. Yet the same technologies that can amplify resistance can also be used for surveillance, control, and propaganda. How did you think about this tension during production? And what significance do you see in these videos—not only as tools of communication, but also as an archive of lived experience and resistance in Iran? Finally, what did it mean to add the sequence of dance videos to the credits?

 Raha Shirazi: Yes, this was something we spoke about a lot during the process. The role of technology, and especially social media, is very complex. On one hand, it has created a space where people can share, connect, and make visible what would otherwise remain hidden. Movements like White Wednesdays would not have had the same impact without it. These platforms have allowed images, voices, and acts of resistance to travel beyond borders.
 At the same time, as you said, these same tools can also be used for control, for surveillance, and for shaping narratives in very powerful ways. That contradiction was always present for me while making the film. Media has always had this dual nature. It can open space, but it can also be used to restrict it.
 For me, the most important question was not the tool itself, but how it is used, and by whom. In the context of Iran, many of these images exist because people are choosing to record and share, often at great personal risk. So each clip becomes more than just content. It becomes a form of testimony.
 I also think about these materials in an archival sense. Under regimes where there is a constant attempt to control or erase narratives, these videos become a way of preserving memory. They are fragments of a lived reality that might otherwise disappear. In that sense, they are not only immediate, they are also historical.
 And the dance videos at the end were very important to me. I felt a strong need to leave the audience with a sense that, despite everything, there is still hope. That no matter how much the regime tries to control and suppress, there is something that cannot be fully taken away.
 Through dancing, these women are expressing something very simple and very powerful: that their bodies belong to them, that they have the right to choose what to do with them. But also something more than that. The regime has tried to silence not only their voices, but their joy, their presence, their right to laugh and to be fully alive. And these women refuse that. They refuse to let that part of themselves be taken.
 Dancing, which is such an ordinary act in many parts of the world, becomes in this context a symbol of resistance.
 For me, those images represent a younger generation that continues to express its desire for freedom, even through the simplest act of movement.

On Courage

 Q: You said something that stayed with me: “Bravery is when you let go and act.” It's a beautiful definition of courage. On a personal level, what are you trying to let go of right now, and what form might that action take?

 Raha Shirazi: That’s a very beautiful question, and also a difficult one.
 I think, for me, what I am constantly trying to let go of is a certain form of fear. Not necessarily fear in a dramatic sense, but the quieter kind, the one that makes you hesitate, that makes you question whether you should speak, or act, or take space.
 But there is also another fear, maybe even deeper, which is the fear of a life not lived fully. And that is something I try to remember every single day, in the choices that I make.
 Making this film required me, in many ways, to let go of both. To accept that I cannot control how the work will be received, or how it will move in the world, but that I still have a responsibility to do it, and to stand by it.
 And I think that process doesn’t end with the film. It continues.
 So if I think about action now, it’s not one single gesture. It’s a way of being. It’s choosing, again and again, not to step back into silence. To keep speaking, to keep engaging, to keep creating space for these stories, even when it feels uncomfortable.
 For me, that is what letting go looks like right now.

 aos khg