My Iranian Paradise

A middle-aged woman born in Denmark (and living there now), returns to Tehran, Iran's capital, where she spent the first 22 years of her life. Arriving at the airport, she encounters a woman whose black chador covers the lower half of her face. “Things are quite different now,” the mystery woman warns the visitor, before vanishing into the night. As you might guess from this opening scene, Katia Forbert Petersen and Annette Mari Olsen's My Iranian Paradise is not “pure” documentary. In fact, while this is actually Petersen's story, she's behind the camera: the person we see moving through the city is Olsen (and we do see and hear from the chador-clad figure again—or at least someone historically knowledgeable who looks the same from the bridge of her nose to her forehead).Viewers will learn that Petersen's parents met in Iran—her father was a Danish engineer who'd helped build a railroad in Iran and then found a job with the Iranian Ministry of Transport, while her mother was a Polish survivor of a World War II prison camp in Siberia. Through archival footage—including newsreel shots of Iranian political upheavals over the past half-century and home movies from the family's once-happy days in Iran—coupled with beautifully photographed present-day scenes, My Iranian Paradise underscores the fact that life has indeed become “quite different”—especially for women. Like Persepolis (VL-7/08)and The Queen and I (VL-11/09), this is an interesting portrait of the darker side of Iran's shift to a theocracy. Recommended. Aud: I, J, H, C, P. (F. Zoretich)