"We knew it was a very crazy and challenging project that needed insane organizational skills but also really thinking outside the box." -- Maryam Keshavarz

5 Questions #16: The Persian Version" Director & Two-time Winner of Sundance

The Persian Version won both the screenwriting award and the audience award at 2023 Sundance Film Festival, marking the 2nd time Kersharvaz has won the audience prize there. And it’s no surprise. The Persian Version was one of the funnest screenings I’ve been to all year. And I am not alone: I went to see another film recently that was filled with folks of a senior set years beyond me; I sat down next to Lucy who started a conversation with me and sees several movies a week. When I asked her what was the funnest and most surprising film she saw recently, guess what she told me. Yup. The Persian Version. The film is quite playful, but also emotional. It is lively and full of ideas. The characters are vibrant and fresh. And it is the film we need right now, capturing a world we don’t get to see very much, in all its humanity. I would buy a ticket to watch the audience watching the film as I suspect it surprises and delights all, and it doesn’t get much better than that!

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What of your own life did you draw inspiration from for your new film THE PERSIAN VERSION?

We always grew up with these big immigrant stories. “The Godfather” and “Joy Luck Club.” All these films, but it was never our stories. Not even remotely close to us. I’ve always wanted to do our great immigrant story that’s so Persian, that’s a mix of laughing, crying, dancing … and eating!

This film is based on my family. It really is our story. As a kid growing up, I really wanted to see our great immigrant story. We learned to be American by watching TV. I grew up in an insular community. All my parents’ friends were Persians. So you have your own world and you learn to be American through television. I just really felt like I never saw anything that represented us. I mean, I loved “Good Times” growing up because it was like this family struggling in New York and that seemed pretty close to us, or “Eight Is Enough.” When I got older, all these huge films that were so influential to me, from “The Godfather” to “Namesake” to “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” — I took a lot of joy in them. But I really wanted to see our stories up there. We’ve been vilified in Western media but we also come from a beautiful tradition of Iranian film.

I wanted something from our perspective of going back and forth, of being bicultural. I thought of doing something more autobiographical. Trump had just been elected, the Muslim ban and immigrants were being so vilified. I just felt compelled to tell a story that was nuanced and personal and flew in the face of the rhetoric that was being touted.

When I was thinking about making an immigrant story, I thought, you know what’s so interesting? My mother is also a writer just like me in some ways. When you become an immigrant, you write your own story, you decide what’s your narrative. You reinvent yourself… So I really started to think of my mother and I as a sort of reflection of each other and all the stories of my mythology as an immigrant coming here. My family’s interesting because half of my brothers are born in Iran and half of us are born here. So even that experience is a very split one. But yeah, I started thinking about what it means to reinvent yourself.

I thought of the secret that did happen with my father. I thought of how that’s our identity in some ways, and it was blown up by my grandmother revealing this secret. It really started to make me think about immigrant identity. So I felt like that should be the heart of it. Like all of my films, women are always front and center. Every film I’ve ever made is about the resilience of women in difficult situations, be it patriarchal societies or governments that are not sympathetic to their situation. I don’t know how to write anything else. I’ve always written from the women’s perspective and I like to say the men in the film are a chorus, as they should be.

You start your newest film in a place of tension — a young woman dealing with the homophobia of her mother — but that’s just one piece of the story. Can you talk about the mother character’s journey from such a potentially unlikeable place that might immediately turn off your audience to one of your leading characters?

It was something I fought a lot for because there was this feeling of, “Oh my god, is this character so unlikable that people will just cringe and that’s it? They’re going to be out?” But it was really important for me that we do start with that because part of the whole thing is that we think we know people. We judge people in our families, in society. We dismiss them, or we become emotionally distant from them. But what if there’s a whole world behind that, that we don’t know? Particularly our mothers because they hold so much of the cyclical trauma of our cultures, literally, in their bodies. There’s been so many things about the transportation of trauma in DNA and maternal DNA.

It was really important for me to start there, then for the audience to be disarmed, just like the character is in learning the secret. I want the audience to mimic that experience of being stripped of all of our preconceived notions and then actually not only caring about this person, but at the end weeping for them. I think that was kind of my strategy, and it’s a challenging one for sure. It’s a risky one, because I know, even myself, that that was a difficult scene to direct truthfully for both sides. There’s so much there that’s not even about that. That’s just a tiny iceberg, and beneath that is a whole entire history. It was a challenge for sure, and it was actually quite emotional for me to do that.

But then, the process took over of this disarmament and really, more than anything, empathy. To try not to understand people from the point of view of today — 2023 — but what it was like for someone then. I tell people, don’t think of your parents as a 74-year-old. What were they like at 14? Really challenge yourself to think about that. That was a challenge for me in writing this and casting it.

I cast someone who was actually 14 to play that role. I think if I had maybe cast someone who was 25 playing 14, you wouldn’t have that same emotion. That’s really the age of what that person went through. Even the father having to be strong and become a man. Within patriarchal societies, men are also trapped in what they have to do. He has to become a man at 11. That’s a child and so much burden is put upon him. Then, of course, structure plays a big role in how and when we learn information. I wanted it at the end to be — it’s funny at the end, and then there’s a gut punch.

But I totally get that, particularly with the queer community, that would be the case. But I’m really satisfied. I feel like it’s really important for people who are from a bicultural background, who also get it in a way that maybe others don’t. Sometimes, it might be challenging for others who don’t have that experience, but for us who are, we’re all about intersectionality. This is just one part of the story.

Could you tell us about a collaborator you’ve worked with and why you respect them?

In my most recent film, I had so many excellent collaborators from editors to cinematographers and producers. But I have to say my longest and most intimate collaboration on the film was related to casting and the actors. I first met casting director  Lindsey Weissmueller in September 2020, when my film had only development financing and making the film was an urgent a persistent need. Her passion for the material was immediate. It was going to be a major major challenge - casting a huge family thru three different time periods that spans decades and continents. On top of that - the film was in Persian and English, and it was based on real people. And no pressure, my family!

It was certainly the biggest challenge of both of careers. It was the world’s biggest puzzle, and the film came together and fell apart so many times - producers came and went, as did attached editors, DoPs, and hardest were the actors but Lindsey and our relationship was maintained thru it all. There was more than one time, when I thought, I can’t make this film without this or that actor - and Lindsey in her wise ways was my therapist and friend: “This is a great a script, and the right actor will be cast, and you’ll never remember it was supposed to be anyone else. Trust the process.”

I loved Lindsey because we knew it was a very crazy and challenging project that needed insane organizational skills but also really thinking outside the box - and she was game for us to create our own path.  We needed to be open, to the multiple possible roads that could lead us to the best cast and a cast that could work in the way that i needed to work.

So when the film finally came back together, and I literally decided it would not fall apart come hell or high water - Lindsey and I had the crazy task of casting more than 60 speaking roles. It’s not an understatement, when I say no stone around the world was left unturned. We sought professional and non professional actors from around the globe. So we began with casting first the character of Leila, who was essentially playing my life. The actress needed to speak Persian and English, be able to play 16-29, be able to play basketball, be funny, and be ready for a crazy ass production during covid that was going to be shooting in Turkey and USA. Once Lindsey and I decided on Layla Mohammadi, the next to cast was her mother. A character that was strong, funny, completely bi-lingual and could believably play 30 years of a character and have good chemistry with her daughter. At this point, we had essentially every actress around the world who could possibly play the role. We had found a triple threat in Niousha Noor. And then the task of casting version of the mother - to play 13-18 but retain the innocence of the 13 year old child bride - a young non actor that had to be able to deliver a three page monologue directly to camera and i wanted to bring from Iran not the diaspora. This meant casting remotely via zoom with high school students in Iran.  And then finally with all the women cast, we had to turn to the men in the film who would be the chorus to the women’s stories. The father and the 8 brothers that could plausibly be a family, but were distinct in looks so they weren’t confused for one another. Lindsey’s constant probing, our endless meetings of putting our heads together beyond the typical casting options.

The entire process was the biggest puzzle and challenge possible. It was a constant organizational challenge, and one the really helped me solidify a great working structure. Lindsey was my greatest collaborator in the project  because she is part of the earliest part of making the film - putting the world together thru the faces and voices of these actors. The process is such a deeply vulnerable one for me, because i take casting so so seriously. I am obsessive about casting…

What’s the difference between how you approach directing / producing (particularly the first day) versus the first time?

I think like many people in this industry, particularly women and BiPOC folks, my career has had lots of twist and turns. And what I have realized, is that long journey has brought me back to the very beginning.

When I made my first narrative feature Circumstance, it was a crazy proposition. It was a family drama and it was a queer love story set in Iran, but needing to be shot in another country because of issues of censorship in Iran. Although it wasn’t an autobiographical story, it was a deeply personal story to me. Also, it had never been done before - a film that put female sexuality front and center in an Islamic context, in the context of young people yearning for a sense of freedom more widely in the society.   There were so many risks in making such a film - both creatively and some real life risks like getting arrested during production and facing threats upon the films release, but everyone who was involved in the film believed of its worth. That it was important to take these risks together. We were bound, like a family - to take risks to protect the project and each other. It was a true feeling of family.

Later in my career, I was told that there was “ a right way to make films,” one that was based in professional detachment, cold business, and moral apathy. I bought into this for a brief time. It was such an alienating way to work. I had lost my way as to why I was making films, and how I wanted to make films. That feeling of family. So i made a conscious decision when i made The Persian Version, I was going to go back to that feeling that making my first film Circumstance gave me. I was going to be way more punk rock in making this film, we were going to path a new way in making this film. We were going to take risks, we were going to make something singular, and  more than anything I was going to make it with folks who were like family. When Ispoke with our casting director Lindsey, I said I am not only casting people to play my family members, Iwant to create a sense of family on this set and in rehearsals. There were a few instances, where we had a great actor but Lindsey and I felt, they wouldn’t fit into how we wanted to make the film, so they weren’t ultimately cast.

As my films scale up, I hope to find a way to keep that feeling - punk rock family.

What do you do to stay committed and lift work up higher?

Our work is so crazy, and we go so many cycles of being high and then thrown down to its deepest depths of despair. There are a few things that really help with our overall commitment to the craft of filmmaker. Community, travel, and the joy of being the audience.

Community. I have found that a close group of artists friends for moral support has been vital to my commitment of my work. I have a few different groups I’m part of - there’s the women/ biopic director group, a group of Iranian-American artists (filmmaker actors, musicians), and more recently a more indie writer-director film group that grew out of the days of the strike. All of these are vital to know we aren’t alone in the ups and downs of the struggle, to focus why we make our work, and to laugh and learn from each others wins and losses.

Travel. I think it’s too easy to be caught in the insularity of the American film community. Travel is a big part of my process of remembering we are part of a global community. Besides the beauty of observing how other cultures live and interact, I also find being outside of the US helps me clarify my own very complicated relationship to being American. As a child of Iranian American immigrants who grew up in NY/ NJ but was often vilified in the American media, I struggle in my youth to understand my dual identity. I was often made to feel, I wasn’t really American even though I was born in NYC. In the Trump Era, make America great was the ultimate slogan of displacement and alienation for so many. In the early days of Trump, I was at a New Year’s party in Lisbon Portugal. I was chatting to journalist, and they politely asked my name and where I was from. Maryam, I’m from Los Angeles but grew up in New York. Where are you really from? My parents are from Iran. Ah so you are Iranian. I think at this moment I realized how important it was for me to claim I was unabashedly American. As a child of immigrants, I declared I was the true quintessential American. And I think that was such a strong defining moment for me.

What is the best advise someone ever gave you?

Write what you know and make films only you could make.

Maryam Keshavarz is an Iranian-American writer, director, and producer. Her first narrative feature, CIRCUMSTANCE, won the Audience Award at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, best debut film at the Rome Film Festival, the Audience Award at Outfest, and a dozen other awards. The critically acclaimed film was released by Participant Medic and Roadside Attractions. Maryam's sophomore feature VIPER CLUB starring Academy Award Winner Susan Sarandon had its world premiere at Toronto International Film Festival 2018 and was released theatrically by Roadside Attractions. THE PERSIAN VERSION, an epic dramedy of migration, family, and the secrets we keep, that traverses decades and toggles between the United States and Iran, is Maryam’s third feature premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival in Main US Competition. THE PERSIAN VERSION won rave reviews as well as the Audience Award and the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award, making Keshavarz the only director in Sundance history to win the Audience Award twice. THE PERSIAN VERSION was acquired by Sony Picture Classics and distributed theatrically in Fall 2023.