(A talkie, courtesy of TIFF Bell Lightbox, in Toronto)
“Endurance is the only option that Iranians have.”
So wrote an Iranian blogger in summer 2009. He, or she, witnessed a disputed election, then its awful aftermath, and concluded that neither self-respect nor education was enough to combat repression; nor patience, nor even outrage, though all were components of the struggle. For Iranians pushing upward against the brutal boot-heel of their own government, it was also necessary, and noble, just to persist. Doing so meant calling again and again for reform from those who’d resort to arrests and beatings, torture, rape and murder to silence them. These stakes were no secret to anyone, anywhere on earth—not in the Digital Age. Yet President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad remains in power today, and so The Green Wave, rather than simply documenting events of almost two years ago, remains a call to action: not only to those yearning for freedom in other lands, but to those still yearning for it in the filmmaker’s own.
