January 31-2014
“Sepideh” is a truly offbeat, but inspiring, documentary film. It is all about a teenaged girl who lives in a town no one has ever heard of in Fars province, who addresses her diary entries to Albert Einstein and who dreams of becoming an astronomer.
In the dusty corner of Iran where she is growing up, she comes across as not quite right. Girls don’t want careers in science. Her family can’t afford to send her to college—and probably doesn’t want to even if it could.
Sepideh Hooshyar is met with constant obstacles from family, friends and the educational system as she battles tradition and culture to fulfill her potential.
The film “Sepideh: Reaching for the Stars” is an inspiring story of a young, talented, intelligent and passionate young woman who is faced with nearly insurmountable challenges to her choice of a way of life.
The film is the first feature documentary by Berit Madsen, a female Danish filmmaker. In one sense, it is a love letter to the audacity of hope.
The 88-minute film screened this month as part of the World Documentary Competition at the 2014 Sundance film festival. Although, it did not win an award, it has generated much comment and applause. It is likely to show at many film festivals. And it is available now through iTunes in the US and Canada.
Sixteen when we meet her in the film, Sepideh lives with her mother and brother (her father died suddenly a few years ago) in Saadat Shahr, a town in Fars province. Though the family seems comfortable, their finances are turning precarious. The fields they own have gone dry and are unplanted, and the late husband’s relatives have not been helpful about repairing a well. Mom also worries constantly about Sepideh, who invites gossip by going out stargazing at night and fixes on goals seen locally as unrealistic.
Sepideh sticks to her ambitions in the face of a mother whose advice is “Learn how to cook!” and an uncle who is unapologetically traditional and patriarchal.
While Sepideh gets little encouragement around her hometown, she does better by writing her idol, Anousheh Ansari, who in 2006 became the first Iranian astronaut.
“I believe that if you want something bad enough, it will happen,” Ansari says to encourage Sepideh.
Variety, the newspaper of the entertainment industry, praises as “frequently inspired” the work of cinematographer Babak Tefreshi, who uses special nighttime and time-lapse photography to capture Sepideh’s nighttime adventures with her telescope.
Sepideh was only 14 years old when Madsen met her and subsequently documented the girl for nearly five years.
Madsen hoped to tell an uplifting story. There are many documentaries that deal with the difficult issues women often face in the Middle East, she told Wired magazine. But those aren’t the only stories. Through Sepideh and Iran, where growing pockets of the country’s huge youth population want to step outside the country’s norms, the director said she saw an opportunity to document a different kind of struggle.
When she began filming, however, Madsen didn’t know whether or not the story would end up being uplifting or become yet another reflection of the limitations experienced by girls like Sepideh.
Today, Madsen says the strong-willed young woman she met six years ago is still as determined as ever and is currently studying physics at a small university. “I had no idea how Sepideh’s life would develop, but I had a hunch that … wouldn’t be the story about suppression and victims,” she said. “I think it’s also very interesting to hear about meeting young people who dare to dream – those stories exist too.”
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Madsen said, “My husband is from Iran so I’ve been there and been struck by the difference between the images of Iran and being in Iran. But this particular film occurred by coincidence.
“I’d heard about this place in absolutely the middle of nowhere. It’s more than 600 kilometers south of Tehran. I’d heard about the place, which had an astronomy club and this teacher who wanted to build an observatory. So I did go as fast as I could down there really to find out what on earth was going on. And then one night I was at the physics teacher’s house—the guy who wanted to build the observatory—and there was a little group and among them there was this 14-year-old girl with a telescope almost her size and shiny eyes almost burning on the outside of the skin and I think I just fell in love.
“I met her family and opened the door to her room and it had all these posters of Albert Einstein looking over with his gray hair going everywhere. You know, if you go to a teenager’s room—even if it’s in Iran—you expect a poster of a rock star.”
Einstein appears to have been an inspiration for Sepideh because his start in life was not easy. Madsen said, “She was reading a biography about him that said, when he was a child, people thought he was not really normal and he failed a math class. But he insisted always to go his own way and not care about it and just really go for what he wanted. And it was so clear to me there was an immediate connection [for her] with Einstein. She had read that Einstein played violin, so she had actually acquired a violin and wanted to know what kind of feelings he was having.”
Sepideh is now 20 years old and engaged. Madsen said the engagement surprised her. “I didn’t even see it coming. I thought she wouldn’t pay attention to guys,” Madsen said. “In the beginning I was like, ‘Oh no, is that going to be the turning point? Are you going to give up?’….
“She really, really fell in love—and you can’t blame anybody for doing that. And he’s really supportive. I think he got scared because I was like ‘stay away from Sepideh!’ but that was only for 10 minutes and then I started getting to know him and he’s really a great guy.”
Asked if the story in the film is representative of Iran today, Madsen said, “I think it’s representative in terms of what kind of youth we’re dealing with in Iran. Sepideh looks like an ordinary girl from the countryside, but in her mind and in her will she can determine and decide her own future. And this is what you find among people in Iran. They are wanting to be part of the world and not wanting this separation.”