Iranian Journey
Directed by Maysoon Pachachi for ZDF/Arte, Legend Productions, 2000
First Prize, Kalamata International Documentary Festival, 2000
83 minutes
Massoumeh Soltan Baloghie is the first woman long-distance bus driver in Iran and, probably, in the whole Islamic world; an ‘ordinary’ woman in an extraordinary situation. The film looks at the ways in which Iranian women have dealt with the constraints imposed on them and how they have managed their lives over the past 20 years since the Revolution - at their small everyday acts of resistance.
IRANIAN JOURNEY is a documentary road movie - a haphazard mosaic. On a 22 hour bus trip north to south across Iran from Tehran to Bandar Abbas, Massoumeh talks about her life and aspirations, her passengers chat, eat, sleep and tell their stories, and the film explores the cities en route, talking to a random cross-section of the people who live there.