“I Thought You Hate War As You Called Me!”

While war destroys cities, it erases not only lives but also memory, culture, and the possibility of continuing to write history. At the same time, in the shadow of the war of aggression waged by the U.S. and Israel, state repression in the Islamic Republic of Iran is intensifying—more quietly, less visibly, but all the more intensely.

What was built up over years by civil society movements is now being pushed back, fragmented, and systematically erased.

This program features films by the independent film collective Left Bank from Iran. The works were created under difficult conditions—before and during the escalation of violence and war. In moments of massacres and U.S.-Israeli bombings, the internet in Iran is not merely disrupted but cut off as a strategic weapon to prevent witnessing and to stifle the cry to the outside world.

The filmmakers work in this vacuum—where communication is severed and artistic practice is life-threatening. The films reach us as fragments of an interrupted dialogue: urgent testimonies from a space that has been violently cut off from the world and destroyed by the forces of war.

Aesthetics of Resistance: The Other Cinema

These films are made without a budget, often within a few days, with minimal resources. For many of those involved, this is their first time making a film, and they take on all roles themselves: directing, cinematography, editing, and sound. This practice is not merely a stylistic choice, but a form of survival—and of resistance. As non-narrative cinema, these works reject the dominance of narrative.

They do not seek linear meaning, but intensity: striking images that confront rather than represent.

Accompanied by an introduction by Dr. Maryam Palizban on the disappearance of safe spaces when war and repression attack both culture and life.

Since 2018, the Left Bank collective has been dedicated to the field of documentary film, with a focus on education, production, and filmmaking. Through a council-based structure, this self-managed and independent organization aims to break down conventional forms of film production as well as vertical, hierarchical educational models.

To date, Left Bank has produced and screened dozens of films in the realm of non-fiction cinema, with a particular emphasis on documentary and experimental practices. Its educational and production workshops, accessible through open calls, offer participants annual programs lasting several months, ranging from the creative ideation process to public film screenings.

Left Bank’s core principles include the screening and rediscovery of marginalized and forgotten masterpieces of non-fiction cinema; a revolt against the dominant and rigid cinematic grammar; the elimination or reduction of delay as a defining feature of cinema; the revival of collective and reactive filmmaking; resistance to cinematic centralism; resistance to the hegemony of narrative cinema; the elimination of hierarchies in both education and production; the redefinition of the film economy; and the creation of no-budget or low-budget works using simple tools and minimal resources.

• Film series produced by the Iranian film collective Left Bank
• Presented by 3 Days to Liberation
• Curated by Maryam Palizban In cooperation with CONSTANZA MACRAS | DORKY PARK

The event will be held in English.