Fifty French personalities sing “Pray” in support of the Iranian people

Posted in: 02/11/2022 – 11:12

Make the voice of the Iranian people heard through French personalities and citizens. This is the idea behind the video, directed by French-Iranian artist Marjane Satrapi, which was broadcast on social media on Wednesday 2 November.

Some gruesome tones are ringing. ” To dance in the street. For fear of the kiss. To my sister, to you, to us. Against a black background, with headphones over their ears, actresses Chiara Mastroianni, Camille Cotten, singer Yael Naim, or even director Olivier Lustau lent their voices to translate, in turn, in Persian, the title “Barai” (“For”). “ There is nothing more powerful than people trying to speak your mother tongue ‘, the comic author of Persepolis confirms that she arrived in France in 1994. The musician Benjamin Beaulay He signs the musical arrangement for the title Bray, which has become a hymn to the freedom of an entire people.

Since the start of the uprising in Iran on September 16 with The death of the young woman, Mohassa Amini After she was arrested by the morality police for wearing a headscarf which he considered inappropriate, this song became a rallying cry for all Iranians protesting. We’ve seen it, in videos, sung by high school girls at a sit-in at their establishment, set up by bare-haired Iranian women, we’ve heard it reverberate in the streets of Iran’s cities and of course punctuated by all the gatherings of Iranian people’s support around the world.

“A message from the French people to the Iranian people”

” This is a message from the French people to the Iranian people “Summarizes Marjane Satrapi, while according to the latest reports from NGOs, the repression has already killed nearly 300 people and arrested thousands. Franco-Iranian writer and director rejects the maternity of the project. About it, author and director Ayla Navidi and collective 50/50, who work for equality and diversity in cinema, joined forces to chant the voice of Iranians beyond the borders and walls of the dictatorship. ” We were shocked by a movement, originally started by women, then mobilized by men, and by the fact that the youth of an entire country, knowing only dictatorship, demonstrated for its freedom. ”, explains Clementine Charlemagne, co-chair of the group, who also mentions that many artists, such as Director Jaafar PanahiImprisoned in Iran.

At the end of the clip, faces and voices sometimes overlaid with images from the movie Persepolis, forming a larger mosaic than ever before. ” We can always say: What is the point of this kind of work? Submit to the artist. But the Iranians I communicate with tell me that when they receive signals of support from abroad, they feel stronger and more protected. They don’t want military intervention or anything else. What they want is to feel that the world is listening to them, that they are being heard, because that is also what gives them the courage, tomorrow, in a week, in two weeks, to take to the streets exposed to their perils. He lives to ask for change. There is nothing worse than indifference in reality: so whatever we do, whatever message we send, it is positive and can provide support. »

Like this clip, “Pray” is in a way a collective work: by compiling tweets summarizing the reasons for Iranian outrage under the hashtag #Mahsa_Amini, Shervin Hajipour wrote this song. Hours after it was posted on Instagram on September 27, the video garnered 40 million views. The young man was arrested and released a few days later, and the young man has since been silenced and the video has been deleted from his account.

” There is everything in this song ‘ confirms Morgan Satrapi. 43 years of humiliation, oppression and poverty until… Even such hints at the ban on having a dog or these domestic cheetahs are endangered and yet their defenders are being prosecuted. “ Nonsense for the Western world ‘, sting.