Anne Frank Film Screened Clandestinely in Iran

Image by Wikimedia

By Josefin Dolsten August 18, 2016

A documentary about Anne Frank was secretly screened in Iran, a country whose leaders have openly questioned and denied the Holocaust.

“Anne Frank: Then and Now” was shown to film students and a professor in a provincial theater. The film did not have government approval, and viewers risked being imprisoned for attending the event, Deadline reported.

The Arabic-language documentary film chronicles the lives of eight Palestinian girls and two Israeli girls during the 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict as they try out for the role of Anne Frank. It was directed by Croatian filmmaker Jakov Sedlar and produced by Branko Lustig, a Croatian Holocaust survivor who won an Oscar for producing “Schindler’s List.”

“Tell your friends about Anne Frank,” Sedlar, who attended the screening, told the Iranian students. “Try to find details of her life; try to learn something about the Holocaust.”

Frank is known for writing a diary when she hid with her family from the Nazis in Amsterdam during World War II. The young Jewish writer died at the age of 15 in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, after her hiding place was discovered.

In 2006 the Iranian government sponsored a conference dedicated to questioning the historical accuracy of Nazi atrocities toward Jews, and the country’s leaders have publicly denied the Holocaust.

In 2014, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei wrote on Twitter: “#Holocaust is an event whose reality is uncertain and if it has happened, it’s uncertain how it has happened.”

According to the U.S. State Department, the Iranian government censors films deemed incompatible with Islamic values. Reporters Without Borders rated the country as “one of the world’s most oppressive countries as regards freedom of information.”

Watch a preview for the documentary here:

Contact Josefin Dolsten at [email protected] or on Twitter, @JosefinDolsten

Josefin Dolsten is a New York-based writer who has reported for the Forward, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, The Times of Israel and other Jewish publications. She currently works as an account director at Fenton Communications, supporting organizations that work to advance racial justice, LGBTQ+ equality, reproductive rights and more. Dolsten earned her B.A. in government from Cornell University and her M.A. in comparative religion and Jewish studies from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

The coming year promises to be filled with more complex and historic developments. We are entering an era where independent, fact-based Jewish journalism will be more important than ever. We need to be ready for whatever 2025 will bring, and with your help, we can be.

We’ve set a goal to raise $325,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO