MOURNERS - Photo Credit: Azita Damandan

We chat to Azita Damandan about MOURNERS.

What inspired you to create this production?

The awful events happened in Iran in November 2019. The sadness was unbearable and I felt helpless. So I thought I should do what I can, in the way I know how to do, so I wrote the script and started filming the project... MOURNERS is the proof of concept of an episodic feature named MASSACRE OF INNOCENTS.

What challenges did you face in creating this production?

The tyrant government of Iran has the history of finding oppositions even outside Iran and kill them. They easily arrest and torture family members of the oppositions who reside in Iran. They hostage them to silence the voices against them in media inside and outside the country. So I was totally scared for my family's safety and originally used an alias.

I didn't dare to ask Persian talents to play the roles in front of the camera and those who I did they refused for the same reason. Self funding the project made it very hard to keep up the quality I wanted for the production. At the same time I didn't want to compromise anything just to save money but at the end of the day I needed to make it happen.  To save money the project didn't have, I forced to took responsibility for so many roles (Writer, producer, director, art director, location scout, ....) and so unfortunately it took my focus away from each role. Say that I am still happy with the end result and am a proud creator of the MOURNERS.

In one of scenes of the film (the cemetery) we had to shoot in one of the strongest storms in Sydney and later stuck behind the flood, had to travel hours through up Blue mountains and then down towards our places due to flooded Richmond bridge.