“I’m still a mother to the depths of my soul. Not according to your values, but mine,” spats Maryam, the conflicted protagonist of “Seven Days,” Ali Samadi Ahadi‘s latest feature. “Seven Days” made its world premiere as a Centrepiece film at Toronto International Film Festival as one of two Mohammad Rassoulof-written films this year (the other one being his own directed feature, “The Seed of the Sacred Fig”, which will reach select North American theaters in late November).
Seven Days screened at Toronto International Film Festival
Like many social realist Iranian films, Ali Samadi Ahadi’s “Seven Days” is perplexing. Tehran-based women’s rights activist Maryam (Vishka Asayesh) is granted a seven-day medical leave from her six-year prison sentence. Maryam’s brother (Sina Parvaneh) and husband Behnam (Majid Bakhtiari) have other plans for her, however. They roll out an intrepid scheme to smuggle her out of the country so she can join her husband and two children in Germany, thus making her brief reprieve from prison permanent.
At first, Maryam chafes against the idea. She has to stay for the resistance, she insists. Her years in prison would have been for naught if she leaves now, she claims. After a heart melting video call with her loved ones, however, she eventually relents. She embarks upon the harrowing journey towards the Iranian-Turkish border, where she would join her family before making their way to Germany together.
Unlike the typical refugee documentary however – like “Beyond Utopia” (2023), “The Swimmers” (2022), and “Flee” (2021) in the past few years – the route is not the focus of “Seven Days” at all. While the film does follow Maryam’s relatively smooth passing through nondescript buses and cabins and eventually, the snow-capped Zagros Mountains, this harrowing route consists of only a mere fraction of the film. Instead, for “Seven Days,” the second half of the film hones in on Maryam’s own internal decision. At the end of the seven days, does she take the opportunity to live abroad with her family, or does she return to Iran to continue the fight?
The German production does not give us any easy answers. On the streets, Maryam is a hero; at home, she is an absent mother. Ahadi neatly gives us both sides of the same coin by dedicating about an hour each of his 113-minute movie. Hence, while Maryam seems almost invincible – and honestly, a bit boring – in the first half, the negatives of her headstrong character are sure to raise eyebrows in the second. It’s almost vindicating to watch her at a loss before her family, which has grown up without her. She struggles to bond with her children, who flip-flop between Farsi and German. She seems naive herself, leaving their safehouse at whim despite the intense precarity of her situation. Her refusal to wear the headscarf – the entire reason for her campaign – seems to backfire, as people on the streets recognize her despite the very clandestine nature of this delicate operation.
Within this titillating second half, the bilingual Tanaz Molaei delivers a spectacular performance as Maryam’s eldest daughter, Dena. She toes the line between a tenacious teenager and anxious child well, giving her character depth in just a minute’s worth of monologue. Shallow focus shots populate these intense domestic scenes as well, imbuing Dena and Maryam’s relationship with more existential intensity. As Dena challenges, how could a mother take care of the people if she cannot even keep her own home?
Maryam’s steadfast (or stubborn, depending on who you are) commitment to the cause (or cowardice towards her own family, depending) gives Ahadi’s feature an eerily relevant, if not borderline controversial, take on the renewed fight for women’s rights in Iran circa 2022. As much as Maryam can talk about her feelings as a mother, her children know that she has little to show for it. It is almost as if Maryam herself is a child for her steadfast commitment to an ideological cause, and her kneejerk reactions towards her family. At the same time, as Maryam introduces, the obligations imposed upon her as a mother are structurally enforced – so, she maintains, she answers to the call of motherhood on her terms rather than society’s.
Right before the credits roll, Ahadi reassures his viewers of his sympathy towards the local feminist movement with a 2024 quote dispatched from Evin Prison by Nobel laureate and human rights activist, Narges Mohammadi. “I hope my children know that I, like all mothers, was ‘out of place’ and marked by ‘rebellion,’ but I was a loving mother whose heart still pounds with the overwhelming regret for her children…” the block quote trails off, ruminating upon the very real dilemma facing feminist activists. Though totally fictional, the innately human dilemma of “Seven Days” resounds loud and clear in this day and age. Finely written and gorgeously shot, the feature will certainly make you think.
