Shortly after the successful Revolution 57 (named after the year 1357 of the Jalali calendar used in Iran), Amir Naderi took his camera on a search for the victims of the massacre of 8 September 1978, the so-called Black Friday. A protest, too many destroyed faces to count, and culprits who in many cases turn out to be as unidentifiable as their victims. When Naderi produced another documentary about the Iran-Iraq War and its (masses of) victims immediately afterwards, the latter was suppressed almost instantly – suddenly, the new state looked too much like the old one …

Olaf Möller