Student’s documentary wins accolades in Beijing

Student’s documentary wins accolades in Beijing

A University of Auckland student’s personal journey to the country of her birth has become an award winning film.

Ghazaleh Golbakhsh’s film Iran in Transit won the Outstanding International Student Film Award at the 12th Annual International Student Film and Video Festival in Beijing.

The film was one of just 83 selected for screening at the festival out of 930 submissions. “I’m still amazed we won an award – especially since we beat out many fiction films.”

Ghazaleh, 32, lives in Auckland’s Northcote but she was born in Iran and came to New Zealand with her family in 1987 when she was six-years-old.

She did not speak English and found the landscape of her new home town Auckland a far cry from the streets of Tehran where her school had sand bags around the buildings because of the air raids during the Iran-Iraq War.

“There were no apartments, just houses and there were people eating mince pies.”

She adapted to New Zealand life but always felt a little different from her classmates.

“When I was younger it did annoy me in primary school when everyone would do their family tree and everyone had England, Scotland and Ireland and I just had Iran. Now I realise how fascinating it is to be from a country with such ancient roots”

A return trip to Iran when she was still a child did little to alleviate her curiosity and desire to see more of her birth country.

She decided to film Iran in Transit as her MA Screen under supervision of Professor Annie Goldson of FTVMS and returned to the country.

“I wanted to go back for a long time.”

But the trip was not without its difficulties. The regime still has strict rules, particularly in regards to female citizens. Just the day before Ghazaleh arrived in Iran her cousin was arrested by the cultural police for the simple act of walking a dog. They claimed she was trying to draw attention to herself.

The 30-minute documentary was filmed using small hand-held cameras, especially in one scene where Iranians are drinking and celebrating at a wedding.

Despite the potential risks Ghazaleh was still surprised by the openness of the Iranian people she approached and asked to talk on camera.

The documentary also includes interviews with members of her own family who live in Tehran, and her cousin Arezou, who travelled with her to Iran from Canada where she grew up.

But both women left Iran with the same conclusion from their journey.

“We both concluded that we didn’t really fit in and we both felt more Western.”

“I didn’t think I would feel that Kiwi there, but I did. I realised that perhaps there’s not just one place that constitutes a homeland. Perhaps we have more than one”

Ghazaleh is now working on funding her latest project, 'The White Hart', about an immigrant maid at a local inn who is haunted by the building’s violent past just as her own past trauma resurfaces.
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