Facing Mirrors Challenges Iran’s Transsexuality Taboo
The Iranian film Facing Mirrors, written by Fereshteh Taerpour and directed by Negar Azarbaijaini, opened in the country’s capital, Tehran, recently. The film brings to the screens the subject of transsexuality; a controversial topic in the Islamic Republic.
The film centres around a relationship garnered between two young women, Adineh and Rana. Adineh is a poor woman from a conservative family who begins driving a taxi when her husband is imprisoned, and Rana is an anarchic woman from a wealthy family who wishes to undergo a sex change operation.
The film joins a raft of Iranian export that focuses on issues of gender, sexuality nationality and identity, and, particularly, the relationships between women amidst poverty and social oppression. Preceding Facing Mirrors, American-Iranian Maryam Keshavarz’s Circumstance received controversy this summer due to its explicit, lesbian themes and content.
Facing Mirrors, although received to critical acclaim in the West – The San Francisco LGBT film festival awarded it Best Film – is also the subject of controversy in its home country. Unlike homosexuality, a crime in Iran punishable by death penalty, transsexuality is not illegal in the socially conservative country. In fact, Iran is only surpassed by Thailand in the amount of people who undergo the operation ever since the Ayatollah Khomeini legalized it in 1987. Despite its legality, there is a general public silence on the topic. Facing Mirrors seems to be lifting this silence; both the film and its topic of transsexuality being openly discussed throughout Iran’s popular medias.
By Rae Harris
Rae Harris is a student. She has undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in
Film Studies from The University of Exeter and undergraduate qualifications in…
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