FROM TEHRAN TO LONDON
Mania Akbari starts shooting a film titled Women Do Not Have Breasts. It is a story about a couple by the name of Ava and Ashkan who live in a beautiful house located in the outskirts of the city with their caretaker couple, Maryam and Rahim. Ava is a poet and a writer, and Ashkan is a man from an upper class and bourgeois background. Unpredictable events happen that affect their relationship.
Mania makes the film up to this point until a few filmmakers are arrested in Iran. Mania leaves Iran and decides to finish her film in London due to the barred atmosphere of filmmaking in Iran. She changes the title of her film to From Tehran to London.
Directed by: Mania Akbari
Cast: Neda Amiri, Bijan Daneshmand, Elahe Hesari, Mania Akbari
Assistant Director: Amin Maher
Producer: Mania Akbari
Cinematography: Ali Mohammad Ghasemi
Editors: Saad Ahmad Bires, Hamila Moayeri, Mastaneh Mohajer
Production Managemer: Amin Maher
Sound Mixer & Sound Editor: Alireza Alavian
Sound: Vahid Moghadasi
45 min, HD, 16.9 | Iran-UK | 2012
Review by Guardian
The film’s main focus is on female bonding in the domestic realm – female grooming, in many ways another form of female enslavement shared with the West. The ‘ouches’ and ‘ahs’ of tweezing and waxing not only reveal sisterhood (Ava-Roya) but also hint at a lesbian relationship (Ava-Maryam), transforming the act of grooming into self-indulgence and therefore an act of defiance against the invisibility and powerlessness of women in Iran (an issue fully explored in Akbari’s One.Two.One). After one of their quarrels, Ava applies the red lipstick that her husband now disapproves of her wearing (there’s no need for her to be sexy anymore) and kisses the mirror to tease him; but what the camera captures is Ava kissing herself.