Hitch. An Iranian story

A film by Chowra Makaremi, produced by Alter Ego Production. 2019, 72 min.

A film by Chowra Makaremi, produced by Alter Ego Production. 2019, 72 min.

Iran, 1988. Thousands of political prisoners, locked up since the aftermath of the 1979 revolution, are massacred. The last revolutionaries opposed to Khomeini are liquidated in secrecy. Among them is Fatemeh Zarei, my mother. While the Iranian state still denies its crimes and tries to erase their traces, this film goes in search of the places, objects and gestures that will allow us to unravel the silence, when personal experience is the only thing that can bear witness to politics.

« Hitch : An Iranian Story intertwines history with family stories around the Iranian revolution of 1979, its betrayals and its consequences. The film is an insider look into the experience of political violence, and how it feeds representations, images, speeches and the things unsaid. The daughter of an opponent to the Islamic Republic who was imprisoned, tortured and killed, the filmmaker resists political negationism by bringing out the extermination of Iranian opponents through the presence of objects and the persistence of memory. » Christiane Vollaire

« Hitch: an iranian story is as much about the autobiographical quest as it is about memory. With this first film of rare sensitivity, Chowra Makaremi exhumes the traces of a state violence destined to remain infigurable. An archaeology of the impossible, Hitch does not conceal the difficulties of showing a gap. » Emmanuel Alloa

> Festivals & Awards

• Etats Généraux du Film Documentaire, Lussas, France, August 23, 2019 / Official selection, section “Lumières du monde”
• Jean Rouch Festival – Ethnographic Film Committee – France – 2019 – Best First Film
• Les Écrans Documentaires – France – 2019 – Student Prize
• Images en bibliothèque – France – 2020
• Cinéma(s) d’Iran – France – 2020
• Le Grand Bivouac – France – 2020
• Doc Cévennes – France – 2020
• Rendez-vous de l’histoire de Blois – France – 2020 – Special mention
• FIDBA – International Documentary Film Festival of Buenos Aires, Argentina, September 24, 2020 / Official Selection “Derechos Humanos”
• 13th International Sciences & Cinemas Meetings – France – 2021 – Best Feature Film 

> Screenings / Online

• Vimeo on demand
• Tënk, subscription-based video platform specialized in documentaries (French/Persian version only)
• BBC Persian broadcast

> Further reading