Support is mounting across the global film community for Iranian directing duo Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha ahead of their trial over “propaganda against the regime” allegations related to their film “My Favourite Cake.” The two are set to face Iran‘s Revolutionary Court on Saturday.
Signatories include Mohammad Rasoulof — the director of the Oscar-nominated feature “The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” who in May fled from Iran to avoid prosecution related to that film — as well as Pedro Almodóvar, Juliette Binoche, Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Agnieszka Holland, Hiam Abbas, Isabel Coixet and the directors of the Venice, Berlin, Rotterdam and Sydney film festivals. The petition, launched by the International Coalition for Filmmakers at Risk (ICFR), has gathered over 3,000 signatures so far.
After months of interrogations and continuous travel bans over the past two years — which prevented them from attending last year’s Berlin Film Festival, where “My Favourite Cake” bowed in competition — Moghaddam and Sanaeeha are now due to appear in court. They are charged with making a film labeled as “obscene” and “offending public morality.” They are also accused of “propaganda against the regime” and other charges claiming the film was “unlawfully” screened without the Iranian authorities’ permits for distribution.
“In the light of these persecutions, we stand uniformly by Maryam and Behtash and their freedom and right to create and to express themselves, just like any filmmaker and artist should be able to,” the ICFR petition reads.
Since its 2024 Berlin bow, the tender rom-com — which follows a 70-year-old woman named Mahin who decides to revitalize her love life and also appears unveiled in the film — has sold widely around the world and given audiences a glimpse of a rarely seen aspect of Iranian society.
As Variety critic Jessica Kiang put it in her “My Favourite Cake” review, “Mahin embarks on an extremely genteel form of cruising, allowing the character’s sense of mischief and self-aware daring to peek through her natural, and socially mandated, reserve.”
