My Stolen Planet

The Brief

An intimate family portrait of life in Iran before and after the 1979 revolution. The documentary won the main prize at the Thessaloniki Film Festival in 2024. My Stolen Planet is told in diary form by Farah, an Iranian filmmaker. She was born during the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979. In the film, she captures everyday moments of joy and defiance, showing how she navigates the contrast between freedom at home and oppression outside it. At the same time, Farah is motivated by her mother, who suffers from Alzheimer’s, to fight the battle against forgetfulness. Using archival footage from her own life and the lives of people she does not know, she tells both her own story and those of many others in her homeland. One of the people we see in the footage is Leyla, an Iranian professor who left Iran during the revolution. In an interview with Variety, Sharifi stated that the metaphor in the film’s title comes from “… the double life we live in Iran: there is their planet and then there is our planet.” Good to know: * Age limit 9+ * Language: Persian * Text: English