Please Step Aside!

An Iranian woman who has just forcibly moved to Berlin after being targeted in her home in Tehran by security forces, is homesick for a country that no longer exists. As she moves through Berlin, she is confronted on her phone with images from Iran, where the death of Mahsa Amini as a result of police violence in 2022 sparked the “Woman Life Freedom” movement.

In a stream of consciousness, filmmaker Raha Faridi reflects on her life as an immigrant. In doing so, she turns the colonial gaze back at the colonizer. She talks in stereotypes about rational, cold-blooded Europeans. When you look at gray Berlin, she muses, it makes sense that Europeans wanted to colonize the Global South.

But where can she feel at home now? The beautiful, sunny place she dreams of no longer exists. Her life in Germany and her memories of Iran contrast with the stream of confrontational social media posts on her phone. Her Instagram feed, with images of Iranian oppression, therefore appears superimposed on phone videos of her life in Berlin.