Iranian filmmaker and script writer Samira Makhmalbaf is the daughter of film director and writer Mohsen Makhmalbaf. She left Iran a few weeks ago to attend a film festival in Finland and now faces arrest if she returns.

BLOOMBERG NEWS

Exiled Iranian filmmakers are challenging the regime of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and speaking up for opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi after the disputed elections earlier this month.

Ahmadinejad won 63 percent of the vote in the June 12 ballot, almost twice as much as Mousavi, sparking charges of vote rigging. Protests so far have led to at least 17 deaths and hundreds of arrests, according to government sources.

From his base in Paris, 52-year-old director Mohsen Makhmalbaf (who made the 2001 movie Kandahar) has become a spokesman for Mousavi, aided by his daughter Samira, also an award-winning filmmaker. Director Bahman Ghobadi — whose Iranian-American girlfriend Roxana Saberi was jailed for four months earlier this year on charges of espionage — says he won’t return until the regime is totally overhauled.

“I’m not a political figure, and this is not a political issue — it’s a national issue: Defending Mousavi is defending the people of Iran,” says Samira Makhmalbaf, 32, two-time winner of the Cannes Film Festival’s jury prize, most recently for her 2003 Panj e Asr (At Five in the Afternoon). “What would be the point in my talking about cinema and filmmaking when people are being covered in blood?”

Samira says Mousavi, acting via an intermediary, asked her father Mohsen to denounce the election results outside the country. Along with her father, she urges new elections and calls Ahmadinejad an illegitimate victor the world must not recognize. “If there is opposition in the streets, and pressure from outside the country, they can’t last,” she says.

The Makhmalbafs are a famous Iranian filmmaking family. Mohsen has two dozen films to his credit. Samira, who often wears a black bandana, is next best known in the dynasty. Makhmalbaf’s wife and two other children also make movies.

Samira said she left Iran a few weeks ago to attend a film festival in Finland, and now faces arrest if she returns. Her father has been living outside Iran for four and a half years, she says; none of his relatives can make movies there. His other daughter, Hana, who was secretly making a documentary, left Iran several days ago and couldn’t bring it with her, said Samira.

In the 30 years since Iran became an Islamic republic, filmmakers have faced limitations as to the themes and content of their movies. Male-female romance and unveiled women cannot be shown, and criticism of politics is not tolerated. Many filmmakers have focused on stories of children or village life to avoid censorship, and won prizes at global film festivals.

“My aim is not the victory of one particular regime or system: It’s justice,” says director Ghobadi, finishing his shrimp salad in a Paris sidewalk cafe. “Young people want their natural rights, and these rights are not being granted. Iran is not a democratic country — it’s a complete dictatorship.”

Ghobadi, who started directing at age 18, is shuttling, suitcase in hand, between Berlin, Paris, New York and London, deciding where to settle. Saberi is with him, and writing a book about her experiences in Iran, he says.

He now plans to make his human-rights movie outside Iran, 70 percent of which will be shot in Germany, and the rest in Morocco or Iraq. He cites interest in the film from German and French producers.

Any hope for cinema in tomorrow’s Iran? “Maybe if there are new elections and someone else, like Mousavi comes in, there may be more space given to filmmakers,” he says. “But censorship and filtering will prevail in arts and culture.”