VERDICT: Upending the online practice of blurring sensitive content, Narges Kalhor’s short documentary celebrates those bravely sharing uncensored images of Iran's recent protests.
Narges Kalhor’s Sensitive Content begins with a square image, blurred beyond comprehension, the only sharpness in the image is the icon of an eye crossed out by a diagonal line. This practice, of blurring ‘sensitive content’ on social media, is used in this context as a proxy for state and societal censorship. Across the course of the film, Kalhor uses this symbol, and different scales of visual obfuscation, to draw attention instead to the people who refuse to be silenced – highlighting and celebrating those that openly share information of violence, intimidation, and oppression at the hands of Iran’s current regime.
The demonstrations that make up the majority of the material Kalhor is working with came after the death of Mahsa Amini while in government custody in September 2022. While the morality police who arrested Amini – for supposedly not wearing her hijab correctly – claims she suffered a heart attack, eyewitnesses assert she was a victim of police brutality. The film incorporates a variety of different examples, either of the civil unrest that has occurred nationwide since the incident or further flagrant acts of state violence. The eye symbol keeps popping back up, sometimes now relieved of the line crossing through it, as though the proliferation of these images online has in some way allowed a veil to be lifted from people’s eyes.
Later on, the eye with the line through it returns, this time placed directly over the blurred images of eyes – presumably of people who have been harmed or even killed during demonstrations. Over 500 people have been killed by law enforcement intervention in the protests. The final eye is that of a 16-year-old girl, Nika Shakarami, who was killed during the initial unrest. “She left with her eyes open,” says a quote attributed to one of her relatives, “She left, fought and did not come back.” As the picture of Nike fades into focus, the line from the eye disappears. Kalhor’s film acts as a fitting tribute to all those who have stood against such danger with their eyes open, and all those who continue to do so. Its final title card, in which the diagonal line now crosses out the term ‘sensitive content’ while the eye is unmolested is a piercing rejoinder not to look away.
Director, editing: Narges Kalhor
Cinematography: People of Iran
Sound: Philip Hutter
Producer: Nicholas Coleman
Production company: Oasysdigital GmbH (Germany)
Venue: Visions du Réel (International Medium Length & Short Film Competition)
In Farsi
8 minutes