«We Used to be Forbidden» by Saba Ghasemi

In an era saturated with over-produced documentaries that stretch out and often sanitize trauma for mass consumption, Saba Ghasemi’s short film We Used to be Forbidden arrives as a jarring and necessary shock to the system. In a mere five minutes of runtime, exploring the systemic oppression of women in Iran—catalyzed by the tragic death of a young girl that fractures the facade of the dictatorship—Ghasemi condenses an expressive urgency that transforms this brief work into an authentic experimental gem and a lightning-fast act of rebellion.

What to an untrained eye might initially appear as a lack of formal polish is, in reality, the driving force of this visual fragment. Ghasemi radically embraces a raw, unfiltered language that fiercely echoes the strict tenets of the Dogma 95 movement. By aggressively stripping the work of the comforting artifices of lighting, stabilization, and sleek editing, the director forces the audience into a state of visceral, almost uncomfortable proximity to the subjects. The shaky, handheld intimacy of the camera acts as a brilliant visual metaphor for the precarious and unstable reality of these women. This is guerrilla micro-cinema in its most condensed and vital form, where the sheer necessity of the message dictates the brutal honesty of the form.

The structure relies on fleeting shards of talking-head interviews, a choice that maximizes the emotional impact. Under Ghasemi’s guidance, this MetFilm School student project becomes an act of radical intimacy. The short finds profound resonance precisely in what might seem ordinary; it elevates the daily survival and on-the-fly reflections of Iranian women into acts of monumental defiance. By focusing on these rapid fragments of lived experiences, the work eschews grand, generalized political grandstanding in favor of lightning-fast, devastating human truths.

We Used to be Forbidden is an unflinching glimpse into a fractured society fighting to breathe. It is a raw, compressed testament to resilience, proving that true cinematic power can explode even within the span of a single breath, residing not in polished aesthetics, but in the relentless, unyielding pursuit of truth. A fleeting, challenging, yet absolutely essential watch.