Joonam

In this moving first-person documentary, a young filmmaker delves into her mother and grandmother’s complicated pasts and her own fractured Iranian identity. Having grown up in rural Vermont, far removed from the homeland of her mother, Mitra, and grandmother, Behjat, Sierra Urich knew of Iran only through family stories, food, and holidays. Seeking to make sense of her heritage, she turns to Mitra and Behjat to construct a probing and sometimes disarmingly funny history of three generations of women and their complex relationship to an Iran of the past. Interrogating family history and memory, including her grandmother’s experiences as a preteen bride and her mother’s rebellious teenage years during the Iranian Revolution, Urich crafts a rich, personal family portrait that poignantly reflects the diasporic experience.

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