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Swedish-Iranian filmmaker Maryam Moghaddam and her partner Behtash Sanaeeha have been sentenced to 14 months imprisonment by Iran’s Revolutionary Court, suspended for five years.

The duo, who directed Berlinale 2024 Competition entry My Favourite Cake, received their sentences at the start of April from Branch 26 of the court, after the end of the Nowruz holiday. The film’s producer Gholamreza Mousavi has also been convicted.

The film was charged with ‘propaganda against the Islamic Republic’, ‘producing obscene content’ and ‘screening without permission’. Its specific breaches included not observing hijab-wearing requirements for its lead actress, Lili Farhadpour, and participating in foreign festivals without approval,...

Elderly, overweight and alone, Mahin (Lili Farhadpour) sleeps until noon, her boredom and isolation palpable. Yet this apparently lonely 70-year-old widow is not as sad a figure as the opening scenes of My Favourite Cake suggest. Directed by Maryam Moghadam and Behtash Sanaeeha (who were prevented from leaving Iran when the film premiered in Berlin last year), this is no sorry tale of lonely old age, at least not entirely.

Mahin is a retired nurse on the outskirts of Teheran, widowed for 30 years and with no desire to remarry. Mahin reminisces about the before-times, when she would go to the Hyatt Hotel (ironically now renamed the Freedom Hotel) wearing ‘high heels and plunging necklines’. She also recalls that she and her friends find it harder to meet: weekly get-togethers are now annual, while other activities have had to be renounced.

If that all sounds a little joyless, Mahin eats what she wants,...

Autumnal romance blooms in My Favourite Cake, a film about seeking passion in life and being bold enough to act when opportunities arise. The directors are Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha, a duo whose previous work, Ballad of a White Cow, pointed to excessive measures in the Iranian legal system. Their latest has a lighter touch but is just as candid about the effect of authoritarian overreach on ordinary lives––a sentiment made all the more apparent when the directors were banned from attending the Berlinale premiere earlier this year as a result of scenes involving alcohol consumption and a character not wearing a hijab. The story is set in lovely, sun-kissed Tehran, a city that’s given us romantic cinema over the years, though rarely with such opprobrium.

The film’s unlikely lovers, Mahin and Faramarz, are beautifully played by Lili Farhadpour and Esmaeel Mehrabi––two veteran Iranian actors with 70-odd credits between them,...

Seizing the day and small rebellions are championed by Iranian directors Maryam Moghadam and Behtash Sanaeeha in their latest collaboration.

Their gentle drama is built around a delightful performance from Lili Farhadpour as 70-year-old widow Mahin, who decides to shake her life up a bit. Living in a comfortable home, Moghadam and Sanaeeha take time to establish her friends and family. She might not see them as often as she’d like but her female mates are a hoot of a crowd, sharing jokes over dinner when they do get together.

Mahin’s daughter is part of the far-flung diaspora these days, connected mostly by interrupted video calls. She’s not a sad case but the older woman is lonely, something which leads her to try to forge new connections. Although this is an Iran-specific film - and partially revolves around the breaking of many of the country’s oppressive rules - Moghadam.

Mahin decides to break her loneliness by searching for a partner in Maryam Moghadam & Behtash Sanaeeha's warm-hearted drama “My Favourite Cake”. The third directorial collaboration between two filmmakers had its world premiere in the official competition of Berlinale earlier this year, screened in absence of the helmers who were not allowed to leave the country. The movie shows women without mandatory hijabs, it lets them speak about their flirts, dreams and longing, and it even involves alcohol drinking and a burgeoning love affair between two people who were not destined to live that dream to the fullest, as well as an open rebellion against the morality police. Iranian authorities made a clumsy attempt at stopping the film of reaching the international audience, which luckily proved futile.”My Favourite Cake” was shot secretly amidst the wide-spread anti Government protests sparked by the death of Mahsa (Jina) Amini, a young Iranian...

Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha won’t be coming to Berlin. The Iranian directors, whose feature Ballad of a White Cow received a rapturous reception here in 2020, were set to attend the 74th Berlinale with their latest competition entry, My Favourite Cake.

“But then the police came, took our passports and told us were banned from traveling,” says Moghaddam, speaking to The Hollywood Reporter via Zoom from the couple’s home in Tehran. “We are now facing a court case because of the film.”

The Berlinale has called on Iran to release the directors, saying it was “shocked and dismayed” to hear of the couple’s fate.

My Favourite Cake follows 70-year-old Mahin (Ballad of a White Cow actress Lili Farhadpour) who, after decades of living alone, decides to revive her love life. On a whim, she propositions Faramarz, a solidarity cab driver (Esmaeel Mehrabi), and invites him to her house.