Sunday, March 17 / 2:00 pm / Ottawa Art Gallery

Program: All the Days of May, Seven Winters in Tehran

Feature presentation \

injustice \ family \ activism

In Tehran, Iran, in July 2007, 19-year-old Reyhaneh Jabarri took a meeting with a potential interior design client. During the site inspection, he attempted to rape her and she stabbed him in self-defence. Through home videos, secret recordings, and interviews with Reyhaneh’s family, filmmaker Steffi Niederzoll shares the inside story of Reyhaneh’s trial, imprisonment, and execution. After being arrested for murder, Reyhaneh is coerced into a confession under threats to her younger sister. She is sentenced to death, with her only reprieve in the hands of the murdered man’s eldest son, according to the law. Through seven years in prison, Reyhaneh’s family fights for her freedom through the legal system, pleads with the man who holds her life in his hands, and rallies activists around the globe for Reyhaneh and all Iranian women. Painful and unsettling, the film, winner of the Compass-Perspektive Award and the Peace Film Award at the Berlin International Film Festival 2023, is a powerful tribute to an involuntary heroine, whose steadfast belief in truth and justice brought forth the injustice of Iranian society to the international stage.

- Tish Black

Short film \

All the Days of May

Tous les jours de mai

2023 / 7 minutes / Quebec
Director: Miryam Charles
Language: French

After the death of her daughter, a mother reflects on her own life and the passage of time.

A meditation on grief and what comes after, Miryam Charles (Song For the New World, IFFO 2023) gives us an intimate glimpse into her own journey through an unthinkable loss.