{"id":102,"date":"2026-05-17T21:05:32","date_gmt":"2026-05-17T21:05:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uspropertymoves.com\/?p=102"},"modified":"2026-05-17T21:05:32","modified_gmt":"2026-05-17T21:05:32","slug":"rehearsals-for-a-revolution-review-a-powerful-documentary-self-portrait-spans-decades-of-resistance-and-repression-in-iran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uspropertymoves.com\/?p=102","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Rehearsals for a Revolution\u2019 Review: A Powerful Documentary Self-Portrait Spans Decades of Resistance and Repression in Iran"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<!-- do not apply CSS styles to this element! --><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>\n\t\u201cThe future remains uncertain\u201d is the closing title card in Iranian actress turned director Pegah Ahangarani\u2019s <em>Rehearsals for a Revolution<\/em>, a powerful autobiographical account of the political turmoil that has wracked her homeland from 1979 until now.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/uspropertymoves.com\/?p=100\">Canal+ Head Says He Will Blacklist Talents Who Petitioned Against Right-Wing Billionaire Owner<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\n\t\u201cUncertain\u201d is indeed the right word for what\u2019s been happening in Iran over just the past few months, with a war \u2014 or conflict or intervention, depending on which world leader is speaking \u2014 that was undertaken with no clear objective and seems to have no workable solution.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<h3>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\tRehearsals for a Revolution\t\t<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n<div>\n<span>The Bottom Line<\/span><br \/>\n<span><\/p>\n<p>\tA scorching historical autobiography.<br \/>\n\t<\/span>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<strong>Venue:<\/strong> Cannes Film Festival (Special Screenings)<br \/><strong>Director, screenwriter:<\/strong> Pegah Ahangarani<br \/>\n<span><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t1 hour 35 minutes\t\t\t<\/span>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>\n\tSomeday there will be a good documentary about this ongoing quagmire. For now, it\u2019s worth taking a look at Ahangarani\u2019s gripping first-person chronicle of Iran\u2019s recent history of resistance and repression, which began nearly five decades ago with a revolution that brought the Ayatollah Khomeini to power and tore the director\u2019s own world apart.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tComposed almost entirely of archive footage, some of it shot by Ahangarani and her relatives, <em>Rehearsals<\/em> is divided into five chapters that situate her story within the greater historical events she and her family lived through.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tThe memorable first section focuses on the director\u2019s father, Jamshid, who was a budding filmmaker prior to 1979, making short movies highlighting the inequities of the Shah\u2019s regime. When that regime fell \u2014 a \u201cmost beautiful day\u201d is how he described it \u2014 Jamshid become a fervent supporter of the Ayatollah\u2019s new government, then a hero on the battlefield during the eight years Iran warred with Iraq.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tBut he grew disillusioned with the powers-that-be when learning that his best friend, Davoud, who starred in his early movies, had been sent to the infamous Evin Prison in Tehran for voicing criticism of the Islamic Republic. Despite Jamshid\u2019s efforts, including letters sent to the Ayatollah, Davoud was executed along withother political prisoners. Any hope in the revolution died right there. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\n\tAhangarani follows her father\u2019s story up with four more chapters, each of them highlighting another figure in her life who suffered under Iran\u2019s authoritarian leadership. These include a teacher who had a major impact on the director in primary school but was forced into exile after she threw a party without wearing the mandatory hijab. There was also an uncle, Rashid, who grew up as a child of the revolution but began protesting against the Ayatollah while in college. He found himself caught up in the violent 1999 raid of a Tehran dormitory that left several dead, hundreds injured and thousands detained.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tGrainy video footage from those protests reveal the brutality of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, who drag students into the street, viciously beat them and then leave them wounded on the ground. With few international news outlets able to freely cover events in Iran and local internet blackouts whenever upheaveals occur, we see images in <em>Rehearsals for a Revolution<\/em> we\u2019ve rarely seen elsewhere.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/uspropertymoves.com\/?p=98\">Ann Robinson, Star of \u2018The War of the Worlds,\u2019 Dies at 96<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\n\tDuring this tumultuous period, Ahangarani decided to follow in her father\u2019s filmmaking footsteps \u2014 as well as those of her mother, the director, producer and screenwriter Manijeh Hekmat (<em>Women\u2019s Prison<\/em>) \u2014 by becoming a child actor, then a professional who went on to star in nearly 40 features. Like her parents, she also picked up a camera and began shooting whenever she could, capturing family highlights but also documenting the waves of protests that broke out as she grew into an adult.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tThese culminate in the film\u2019s riveting fourth chapter, set during a 2009 uprising after the contested re-election of despotic president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Hundreds of thousands took to the streets, including Ahangarani, who searches in vain for a friend in Tehran\u2019s Revolution Square as police crack violently down on protestors. In one nearly uninterrupted take, we follow a group seeking refuge in a private home as cops storm the building, revealing what it\u2019s like to experience bloody state repression firsthand.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tIt\u2019s not hard to see a pattern here: protest after protest is met with jackboots, billy clubs and live ammunition, in an unbroken cycle that continues all the way through the massacres of this past January, which left thousands more dead in the streets. These were quickly followed by U.S. and Israeli bombings that began a month later, resulting in many more innocent victims.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tWhen will it end? Ahangarani has no answer for this and is eventually forced into exile herself, while most of her family remains stuck back in Iran. She marries, has a daughter and continues to document events from afar, trying to shape them into a narrative on her desktop editing system. But it\u2019s not easy to make sense out of so many ruined lives, even if the presence of a new child offers some hope.<\/p>\n<p>\n<em>Rehearsals for a Revolution<\/em> is a cautionary tale about speaking up in a place where rebellion can cost you your livelihood, and quite possibly your life. It\u2019s also a despairing tale of a family that lost several loved ones to a regime they initially supported, and even fought for in a long and brutal war, only to find their affinities betrayed by despotism. <\/p>\n<p>\n\tAnd yet in its final chapter, Ahangarani\u2019s dark historical self-portrait also looks forward to a time, perhaps not too far in the future, when all the rehearsed revolutions she experienced will finally lead to a real one, and things in Iran change for the better.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/uspropertymoves.com\/?p=96\">Barbra Streisand Unable to Attend Cannes Closing Ceremony After Suffering Knee Injury<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Iranian actress turned director Pegah Ahangarani&#8217;s &#8216;Rehearsals for a Revolution&#8217; uses archive and home footage to chronicle decades of unrest in Iran.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":101,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[24,8,13,94],"class_list":["post-102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting","tag-cannes","tag-cannes-2026","tag-cannes-film-festival","tag-iran"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - 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