One year after his film Afghans, director Solène Chalvon-Fioriti immersed herself in another very closed country. In the documentary We, the youth of Iran, broadcast on Sunday April 21 on France 5, it paints the portrait of a new multifaceted Iranian generation, connected, politicized, feminist or conservative, but always eager for freedom. Thanks to the testimony of six Iranians under the age of 25, the film reveals the profound changes in the country, in the wake of the death of Mahsa Amini and the protest movement that followed. The production of this documentary was made possible by the use of artificial intelligence, which made it possible to anonymize faces and protect young witnesses, who, whatever their opinions, live under a regime which prohibits everyone to address foreign media. The director returns, for franceinfo, to the very particular production of her documentary.
Franceinfo: Your film gives a voice to six young Iranian men and women, and shows their daily lives. Were you able to go to Iran to meet them and make this documentary?
Solène Chalvon-Fioriti: No, my visa has always been refused, I have never been able to go to Iran. So I directed this shoot remotely, with non-professionals. There are almost no more professionals [du documentaire] in Iran: the cameramen are either in prison or followed by the regime and on file, so it was impossible to make them work. We identified people who wanted to learn how to film and we gravitated towards them. We trained the main narrator, Sarah, and two other young women, a hairdresser and a wedding photographer, for filming.
I taught them to frame using secure messaging, with ephemeral messages that automatically delete every 24 hours. We had to be sure that in the event of an arrest, these messages would disappear so that they would not be worried. This is why the film took a particularly long time to make: this entire training part took place in very poor communication conditions, with the State regularly blocking the internet. We started filming in November 2022, so it took over a year. What I wanted to show in my film is that the “Woman, Life, Liberty” movement was a shock wave for everyone. And, above all, it gave us the opportunity to see these Iranian youth in the face.
How did you find the speakers?
I can’t really go into details, but these were random encounters thanks to a Franco-Afghan cameraman. One day he furtively met the central character, Sarah, whose first name was changed. I managed to track her down, but she was reluctant to participate in the film, and then she started sending me voice notes to practice her English and, above all, to vent. Then, the voice notes became intimate confidences, which turned into an interesting link for the film. And, ultimately, she narrated the film with me and filmed a lot with her phone.
Why did you use artificial intelligence to anonymize your cookies?
I have only worked in dictatorships or in countries in conflict. I have always blurred faces for my films. It was very unsatisfactory, very dehumanizing, because a face reflects otherness, fraternity, empathy; the vagueness, no. The first time we did the test with artificial intelligence and received the first faces, it was overwhelming. We had not lost our witnesses. I obviously know their real faces, they have nothing to do with the new ones, but I found them inside. As the expressions, bodies and gestures were preserved, we perceived them behind. This does not create the brake of blur.
“We wanted to keep the imperfections, I didn’t want the faces to be too real either. They are a bit plastic, because the idea was not for it to be too aesthetic. It was to put a face on the person who speaks to us, and above all to anonymize.”
Solène Chalvon-Fioriti, director of “We, youth(s) of Iran”at franceinfo
For me, it’s like a moving mask. In fact, shooting a film with artificial intelligence faces requires a very specific technique, and we did not have access to all the necessary means. So a lot of things didn’t work very well, which explains the imperfections. But ultimately, it was useful to us, because it allowed us to tell something else.
Some voices have been changed, but not all. Regarding Sarah, the main character, it was obvious that we didn’t want her real voice, so we used an Iranian actress. We used different techniques depending on the risks and desires of each person.
Did you involve them in the creation of these avatars?
Yes, and what is striking for me in this film is the fact of involving people in the choice of their false face. This created a very special bond. There’s always something hard about interviewing people who are doing badly. As a journalist, you arrive to collect a risky statement; these people must absolutely trust you, even though you are exposing them to danger. And often, we leave with something unsatisfactory, with this feeling of reducing humanity, distress, crying eyes, to a simple blur. And there, it was fun for them to choose their face. There was an interaction, a collaboration, that made them actors in the film.
But that forces you to think. I have to think about artificial intelligence, since I can’t film faces because it’s dangerous. Lightly blurring these faces is going to get risky too [car d’autres outils, bâtis aussi avec l’intelligence artificielle, permettent aujourd’hui de reconstituer les visages floutés]. I have to use this technique. But paradoxically, I appreciated it and it interests me, because I tell myself that it will open up other horizons for me.
Witnesses favorable to the regime could not testify openly either?
Oh no, never. The regime also imprisons religious people. Moreover, the political sections of Iranian prisons are full of them. This is also what interested me in this film, and this is also what I understood about Iran, namely that the opposition is not between the traditional and the modern. It is really between the pro-regime, those who benefit from its support, and those who do not. This film proved it to me even more.
As we were able to go to the religious, we realized how changing this world was. The single, divorced mother that we see in the film and who is devoted to the regime, is very cultured, she is a doctoral student and she is very enamored of this ideology. It was even more extraordinary for us to have the religious people with artificial intelligence. The regime prohibits all criticism and forbids its entire population from speaking to foreign media, even the most conservative ones. Showing their faces would inevitably send them to prison, it would have been nightmarish. Technically, we changed the apartments, changed the cities, changed the voices when necessary. It was a matter of covering the tracks as much as possible.
How did they agree to testify?
After long conversations, and above all thanks to bonds of trust that have been built in communities of women. Their role is central in the film. Those who agreed to be filmed were women and those who agreed to film were also women. The only man we follow at length did not want to be filmed. There is greater courage in women and it’s not because I’m a woman that I say that. It’s just a reality.
We discover in your film to what extent this Iranian society is transforming…
Effectively. Due to the dictatorship, we do not see to what extent these cultural changes are happening at an incredible speed: families, which in a short time went from six to two children; the explosion of divorces, a procedure enshrined in Islamic law; 60% of students are female students… Iran is experiencing such profound transformations that the regime is incapable of stopping them, a return to the past is impossible.
“What is moving in this country is to discover how abysmal the gap between the people and the leaders is: 70% of Iranians are in favor of the separation of religion and the State, 80% of young people are permanently connected thanks to VPNs…”
Solène Chalvon-Fioriti, director of “We, youth(s) of Iran”at franceinfo
It is not a people who remain silent. Iranian women are very emancipated. There is the life that the regime imposes on them in the public space and there is the control that the people have over their lives in the private sphere. The mullahs cannot interfere everywhere. People still manage to live their lives the way they want.
For the anecdote, Sarah, who is the central witness of the film and who belongs to the very low middle class, asked me if I liked the film Anatomy of a fall, which she saw subtitled in Persian. The cultural level of these people is truly impressive. This attracts immense compassion, because what this kind of gerontocracy offers them in the face is frightening.
What struck you the most?
It is to understand that there is no duality between the modern world and the religious world in Iran. The separation is not there. Every time a political prisoner is released and she speaks to the press, she says that in prison, she was often in political sections with many religious women in chadors. The difference is more between pro-diet and anti-diet. What brings together this plural youth is the desire to choose one’s life, to choose to wear a veil or not to wear one, to be religious or not. It is the question of free choice, which we also find in globalized youth.
The documentary We, the youth of Iran. Travel prohibited among Iranian Generation Z, directed by Solène Chalvon-Fioriti, is broadcast on Sunday April 21 at 9:05 p.m. on France 5, and on the france.tv platform.