0:00

We were in four by four. We went exactly like

0:02

they said. And there was this village that

0:04

was literally lost in time. There was a

0:07

little boy in flip-flops hitting

0:09

the stick with a sheep going up the

0:11

mountain. I have the video. And I walk,

0:13

trying to follow this kid up the mountain.

0:15

And I cannot do it. This kid's running

0:17

up with flip-flops. I have hiking boots. I

0:19

can barely catch up to him. And it's

0:22

just 20 families that live in this ancient

0:24

town. And we had to get the approval

0:26

of the state and the archaeologists. And

0:29

we shot there. And it became a UNESCO

0:31

site after. It really was like an ancient,

0:34

untouched village. It was incredible. Luci's

0:36

Club Project

0:50

Additional featurelaise

0:54

Hello and welcome back to The Director's Cut,

0:56

brought to you by the Directors Guild of

0:59

America. In this

1:01

episode, a family crisis reunites an

1:03

estranged mother and daughter in director

1:05

Maryam Keshavarz's comedic drama, The Persian

1:07

Version. The film

1:10

tells the story of Leila, an Iranian-American

1:12

woman who strives to find balance in

1:14

her opposing cultures. But when

1:16

her large family gathers in New York for

1:18

her father's heart transplant, a family

1:20

secret is uncovered that catapults Leila and

1:23

her mother into an exploration of the

1:25

past. In

1:27

addition to The Persian Version, Keshavarz's

1:29

other directorial credits include the feature

1:31

films, Viper Club and Circumstance, and

1:34

episodes of the series Queen Sugar and

1:36

All Rise. Following

1:39

a screening of the film at the DGA Theater

1:42

in New York, Keshavarz spoke with

1:44

director Crystal Moselle about filming The Persian

1:46

Version. Listen on

1:48

for their spoiler-filled conversation. Thanks

1:57

for coming. So

1:59

sorry. Sorry I had to spend the evening with my

2:02

family. I had to spend

2:04

a lifetime. So you guys get two hours with

2:06

them. Wonderful.

2:09

Very wonderful film. First of

2:12

all, congrats. It's

2:15

a perfect Thanksgiving film. It is.

2:17

It's a film about family. And I

2:20

thought in the Bay

2:22

Area when I was with family, I brought my

2:24

mom and my dad. You came with the whole

2:26

family? Yeah, and my mom's boyfriend. It

2:29

was such a joyful experience.

2:32

Emotional, joyful. I

2:34

think that you're dealing with some

2:37

heavy topics. And

2:40

I think family always is a heavy

2:42

topic. But you're approach was

2:44

so wonderful. You

2:50

have such a clear voice as a

2:52

filmmaker. And I'm so excited

2:54

to talk with you about your

2:57

path and how this film

2:59

is made, et cetera. It

3:01

all started. I just wanted to make something.

3:05

I grew up in New York City. I was born

3:08

from Brooklyn originally. My family lived in Brooklyn

3:10

for many years. And just

3:12

growing up, I never thought there was

3:14

anything that reflected who we

3:16

were as immigrants. I

3:19

would latch on to anything that was somewhat similar

3:22

in watching American TV and film. I

3:25

said the closest I ever got was good times.

3:28

I felt like my family

3:30

somehow, strangely. So

3:32

this is kind of the film I always wanted

3:35

to see when I was growing up. What

3:37

was your first step? What was the first

3:39

thing? The moment

3:41

that you're like, oh, maybe I should make this

3:44

film? No, about my family. I just threw

3:46

my family up on screen. Honestly,

3:48

it was the Trump era.

3:50

And there's a lot of xenophobia. And

3:53

I felt like I was very depressed. And the only

3:55

thing that got me to the day was Saturday Night

3:57

Live. And

4:00

it was like the Muslim ban and all these different things. And I

4:02

thought, I think the most radical

4:04

thing I can do is make

4:06

a film about my community

4:08

that's being so vilified. Iranians were like on the

4:11

Muslim ban and there was all this stuff going

4:13

on, which is very reminiscent to my childhood. When

4:16

our neighbors, like I grew up in New York, our

4:18

neighbors would like beat us up

4:20

after the hostage crisis stuff. So I was

4:22

like, hmm, this is a good opportunity to

4:25

bring some joy in the world. I

4:27

wanted to make a film that you

4:30

could watch and feel like it was your family. So

4:33

I felt the country was very fractured in

4:35

a way that, you know, what

4:38

made me so proud always growing up to

4:40

be American, no matter where I traveled, was

4:42

that we were a country of immigrants and

4:44

that was the American identity. You could have

4:46

your home identity and you could have your

4:48

new identity. And I wanted

4:50

to embrace that idea. I thought, why does

4:52

Trump get to say what being

4:54

American is? So I wanted

4:57

to reclaim that and I wanted to do it with fun and

4:59

joy and I really wanted to be a comedy. So

5:01

I was telling a story, I'm a

5:03

creative capital fellow, so I

5:06

was at a retreat and I was telling funny stories about, you

5:09

know, family secrets and little did I know that it

5:12

was one of the producers of Cinderach

5:14

was there and she was laughing. She

5:16

was like, you have to make this into a film. And

5:19

I knew I wanted to make something a comedy about my community,

5:21

but I didn't know it would be about my family. And

5:24

so that kind of stalks me for a year. You've got

5:26

to do it. So and

5:28

I said, you know, I'll do it as long as

5:30

it's a comedy, like it has to be write out

5:33

comedy. And they were like, great. And they were great

5:35

people to develop it with Carolyn Kaplan and Natalie

5:37

Difford. And they went

5:39

through the process of many drafts. And, you

5:42

know, me finding my voice because

5:44

at first it was really about my whole family. And

5:46

then as I was writing, I realized it's really a

5:48

story about me and my mother. Yeah. I

5:51

wanted to end up that the men were just a

5:53

chorus to the women's story. And

5:56

I actually wrote them as a chorus. Like

5:58

they're always together. They're always in an eight

6:00

shot. You know like they're just one big

6:02

you know they each have their own personalities

6:04

Like give it the actors we worked a

6:06

lot to give each person person a personality

6:08

and a different look But

6:11

they always move as a unit Running

6:13

joke yeah, I was just with my family. They

6:15

do run like they kind of move like a

6:17

unit Do you really have that many brother? Well?

6:20

It's fictional in the movie. I have eight in real life.

6:22

I have seven so Cuz

6:25

I had a brother who wouldn't give me his right so I was like

6:27

you know what I'm just gonna divide you into two So

6:31

it became eight, but I did grow up with

6:33

one bathroom, so I really loved my own bathroom.

6:35

You know So

6:37

like in the script writing process like

6:40

how did you because it's such a

6:42

like an interesting Structure

6:46

like it's a very non-traditional structure.

6:48

You know and I can't write

6:50

Yeah, because you know tough. I

6:52

mean for me like I like to tell like different

6:56

You know people's stories in one film,

6:58

and I think it's like stories within

7:00

story I mean my background's

7:02

in literature, and I teach a lot of writing

7:04

And I mean I knew this can never be

7:06

a standard structure I knew

7:08

that it needed to I knew first of all there was

7:10

my mother and I story that we had to both be

7:13

narrators we could break the fourth wall and And

7:16

I just knew that the heart of the

7:18

story was this trauma. That's handed over from

7:20

one generation to the next So

7:23

I knew I had to start with this idea that we don't like

7:25

the mother and that we evolved the

7:27

story And that they we realized at

7:29

the core of this mothers is trauma

7:31

and that she Literally hands off

7:33

the trauma to her daughter. She says the same

7:36

words in the third act So

7:38

it was important that it you know it not

7:40

be traditional, but it was

7:42

more about this the the impact

7:44

of like where can the impact of that

7:46

trauma the handing of the trauma be the

7:49

most Successful, and I

7:51

thought it would be like later in the film And

7:53

there was a lot of back and forth even through

7:55

the edit process if that was the right thing But

7:58

I was very adamant that it was and I was very adamant

8:00

that the mother's story is a film within a film.

8:05

Each character has its own genre. As

8:07

a director, when I was creating my

8:09

director's book, it's

8:11

a challenge because I knew that the daughter had

8:17

a voice and a style. The grandmother had a voice

8:19

and a style. And the mother had a voice and

8:21

a style. And they were

8:23

leaning from different genres. So

8:26

the daughter is more pop, influenced

8:28

by sitcoms. The grandmother's

8:30

like a spaghetti Western. And

8:34

the mother is like a neo-realist, curious, damn

8:36

a film. But

8:39

you still have to make it cohesive. So it

8:41

was like this idea of, hey, I want that

8:43

to be different genre in a different field, yet

8:45

it has to be the same film. So

8:47

how do we do that? How do we make

8:49

it feel different but the same? So

8:51

we, for instance, decided never to use different

8:54

lensing. We use the same lens for

8:56

all the different areas. We

8:59

didn't change any lighting. We

9:01

tried to keep it very consistent

9:03

through those different

9:05

genres. But we played with genre quite a bit. And

9:09

it's, yeah, I mean, the character is

9:11

a filmmaker. So I thought, how fun

9:14

that we can use all of these

9:16

tools at our disposal

9:18

and just have no boundaries. I was like, you

9:20

know what? Let's screw boundaries. I

9:24

really was about being playful.

9:27

I used the genre to do that. It's so playful, as you

9:30

know my vibe. But

9:33

I want to point out that when you're talking

9:35

about your film, you're using the word we, which

9:37

is very empowering because it's

9:39

such a group effort. Of course,

9:41

yeah. There's so many assets and

9:44

people that help you make a movie. And

9:48

also, it's interesting when you make

9:50

a film that's also based on

9:53

real life, but those places don't

9:55

exist anymore. So my

9:57

family was from Shiraz. in

10:00

the 1960s, I used to go back and forth all

10:02

the time. I mean, I can't go now because I'm

10:04

banned from my first film, but we

10:06

had so many archival video, a Super 8's

10:08

that my grandfather used to send. And even

10:10

as a kid, I remember going to the

10:12

old parts of town that my great-grandparents lived

10:14

in. But all of it is

10:17

gone. It's completely knocked down. It's so modern. So

10:19

even those places don't exist. Even if I were

10:22

to go to Iran, I couldn't get them anymore.

10:24

So I had to go and find a 1960s

10:28

Shiraz in location scouting. I had to

10:30

go find a village that doesn't

10:32

exist anymore. And

10:34

some things were very documented,

10:36

like my Brooklyn brownstone. They

10:39

literally built it with the

10:41

exact toys that I had growing up. It

10:43

was so, sort of the same wallpaper, the

10:46

same cups, the production designers. I

10:48

gave them all these photos. And

10:50

my process is to make a book for each

10:52

department. Who is the production designer? It's a Turkish

10:54

team that were the production designers. You

10:58

have such a point of view with

11:00

production design. It's

11:02

like this fantastical version. It

11:06

was such an interesting process. How

11:09

does that come about? Because

11:11

it's a very strong, bold

11:13

voice in production design. I

11:17

love period. My process, both

11:20

in production design and costume and hair and

11:22

makeup, is I make a

11:24

lot of, I'm really into making books. So

11:26

I make extensive, like 100, 150 page books for

11:30

each department. And they have archival.

11:33

They have inspirations. They have color palettes. And then

11:35

I give it to them. And then they interpret

11:37

that. And they give it back to me with

11:39

their own interpretation of my book, which is such

11:41

a great process. But

11:44

the production designers really

11:46

created the brownstone I grew up

11:48

in. When I went in, and our lawyers, also

11:50

from New York City, and we went in there,

11:52

we sat down. And I kind of had this

11:54

moment. Because I hadn't been there for so many

11:56

years. And then we

11:58

actually heightened some things, obviously. period

12:00

in terms of hair and makeup to make

12:02

it more comedic. But

12:04

you know, it was such a part of that

12:07

is locations and I am obsessive about finding locations.

12:09

So I knew, I did a lot of research.

12:11

I had been to all the countries in the

12:13

Middle East. I had shot in Lebanon. I had

12:15

shot in Iran. And I

12:18

had read that there was this ancient town on the

12:20

border of Syria and Turkey. It's

12:23

called Mardin. So I

12:25

went there and it was very similar to old

12:27

Shiraz, which is very beautiful. But the

12:30

hardest thing was to find the village that

12:32

only had very few photographs, but it had

12:34

my mother's very detailed description of, you

12:37

know, it was a tiny village with lots of livestock

12:40

and the houses were built in the mountains. They were

12:42

built into it. It was so hard to get to

12:44

the house. And I

12:46

searched this region where we

12:48

found it is where the earthquake was in

12:50

Turkey, in Eastern Turkey. But I went everywhere

12:52

with a local guide. I took one of

12:55

my best friends, a gay Turkish

12:57

playwright, and we went to all the villages. And they had

13:00

the villages that they had recommended from the location scan. We

13:02

couldn't find it. And one

13:04

day we were at the archaeological museum and the guy

13:06

had this documentary

13:08

about local music. And he

13:10

said, you should watch this. It has all the

13:12

different little villages that are known for their music.

13:15

So I was watching this 20-minute doc and there was a

13:17

one shot of this village. And I was

13:19

like, oh my God, it was this kid standing on a roof,

13:21

you know, mountain top. And

13:23

I said, where the hell is this village? And he gave

13:26

me, she told me the name is Balali.

13:30

And we go, we're searching everywhere. No one knows where

13:32

Balali is. And then finally the shepherd says, oh,

13:34

Balali is the Turkish name. You need the Kurdish name.

13:36

We were in the Kurdish region of Turkey.

13:39

You need to go to Al-Amni. So it was

13:41

literally like, go to the monastery. There's a cypress

13:43

tree. Turn left at the cypress tree.

13:45

Go down the steep hill. It looks like you're

13:47

going to fall off a cliff, but you're not.

13:49

Just keep going. And then you'll come

13:52

to this village. And it's true.

13:54

We were in four by four. Like exactly like

13:56

they said, and there was this village that

13:58

was literally lost. in time, there

14:00

was a little boy in flip flops with hitting

14:03

the stick with the sheep going up the mountain.

14:05

I have the video and I'm telling my friend,

14:07

holy, this is it. And

14:09

I walk trying to follow this kid up the

14:12

mountain and I cannot do it. He's just kids

14:14

running up with flip flops. I have like hiking

14:16

boots. I can barely catch up to him. And

14:19

it's just 20 families that live in

14:21

this ancient town and we had to

14:23

get the approval of the state in

14:25

the archeologist and we

14:28

shot there and it became a UNESCO site

14:30

after. It really was like an ancient untouched

14:33

village. It was incredible. I

14:35

just love how you like added these like

14:37

bright colorful palettes

14:39

onto everything. It's like,

14:41

it's such a part

14:43

of the concept of,

14:45

you know, when after

14:48

the revolution in Iran, there was so

14:50

many restrictions as to what was allowed and

14:53

not allowed. It went from a very Western

14:55

sort of country to very theocratic country where

14:57

women had to cover their hair and it

15:00

went kind of very backwards. And when

15:02

I was a kid, everything became illegal,

15:04

like Western music, all the nightclubs closed

15:06

and Western music became illegal. So literally

15:08

I used to smuggle tapes like in

15:11

the movie, but I thought it's

15:13

not like now that we can get digital downloads anywhere

15:15

in the world. You have to physically bring stuff. And

15:17

so I thought it was so

15:19

symbolic that no matter what the

15:21

repressiveness of a regime is, that

15:24

you can't keep out music and

15:26

art and life and living. And

15:28

I wanted it to be like

15:30

when they entered with the music, it

15:33

was technicolor. So literally I

15:35

wanted a technicolor version of

15:38

a Bollywood dance sequence. It was fun.

15:41

So let's talk about casting. The

15:45

casting is very challenging. You have

15:47

to find all the actors at

15:50

two ages. And so

15:52

the mother, the woman who plays the mother

15:54

as an adult is an actress who's been

15:56

struggling for 25 years to get, she's been acting

15:58

in the European Union. She came

16:00

when she was 15, from

16:03

Iran to America. And this is her first

16:05

lead role. Leila,

16:07

who plays, and then the young version of her,

16:09

the young version of my mother, is an

16:12

actual 13-year-old from Iran. So

16:15

I didn't want to bring someone from

16:17

America playing that role, because I felt they

16:20

wouldn't have that innocence. I wanted someone not only

16:22

from Iran, but very sheltered. And I

16:24

wanted someone who was actually 13, not a 20-year-old

16:27

playing 13. So

16:30

that was really disarming to me as

16:32

a director, because I found her. She

16:34

was incredible. She's never acted before. She

16:37

tells me, you pull me out of school. You

16:41

make me get married. I have a child that

16:43

dies. And I've never even kissed a boy. But

16:47

it was very challenging to find that role.

16:49

And it was disarming to me as a

16:51

director, because I realized how young my mother was.

16:53

She really was the 13-year-old kid. Yeah,

16:57

and that was really important for me as a director

17:00

to work with a child. She

17:03

was a kid. And it really

17:05

brought up a lot of emotions for

17:07

me as a director, those whole sequences.

17:10

And then Layla, who plays the version of me,

17:12

is a comedian. It was like

17:14

her first big role. And then

17:16

little Layla is very odd, because I was

17:18

one of those people that you never wanted

17:21

to party when I'm scoping

17:23

out your children. I was like, OK, I

17:25

need to find a kid. They're not going to be a

17:27

trained actor. They're eight years old. So I had a Persian

17:29

New Year's party of this actor, an Iranian

17:32

actor in America. And I was like, I

17:35

was like that creepy person. I'm like, don't worry. I have

17:37

my own daughter, I swear. But

17:39

I was like, who's that girl? And she ended

17:41

up auditioning for the film. And she got the

17:44

role. And then the grandmother, I

17:46

think, is the best find. She's an experimental

17:48

theater actress from San Francisco. I met her.

17:51

She's such a badass. She loved

17:53

the role, because she says, when you're over 50 in

17:56

film and theater, you're supposed to be dead sexually.

17:59

And she's like, I love it. I'm 70 and I love

18:01

sex and I never get to talk about it. So

18:03

I love it. And that's

18:05

very much the spirit of my grandmother. So

18:07

it was great to like assemble these women.

18:09

And of course it's such an ensemble of

18:11

the men that come from all over the world.

18:14

You know,

18:16

to find also my father and different ages, but

18:18

also to find the other woman, the Roya

18:20

character was important for me to find someone

18:23

who's not this villain, right? You like her.

18:25

She's so kind. She's like the mother figure

18:27

for both of them. So it's, you know,

18:29

all of these little nuances of casting

18:32

tell you, you know, where your sympathies should

18:34

be in some ways. And

18:36

it's, and it was great because I

18:39

wasn't just making a film about my family. I

18:41

had an entire cast who was from the diaspora.

18:44

They lived either in the U.S. or they lived in

18:46

Canada or Europe or Australia. And

18:49

they were making their family's immigration story too,

18:51

you know. And so for them, everyone

18:54

was so invested because they had never seen

18:56

a film like this. There's

18:58

been films about Iranians in America. There's been films,

19:01

obviously, about in Iran. There's some of the greatest films

19:03

are made in Iran. But there's never

19:05

been a film that bridges the two worlds.

19:07

And for them, that was so meaningful. Yeah,

19:09

yeah. I mean, generally, like how has the

19:11

feedback been? Within the

19:13

community? Yeah. Yeah.

19:16

I mean, we had a couple Iranians

19:18

at Sundance balling because they had literally

19:20

people have never seen themselves rep- we've

19:22

always been represented as terrorists. We've

19:25

always been represented in a very monolithic

19:28

way. And it's so easy if you dehumanize

19:30

people that you can go and bomb them

19:32

and start wars without any recognition

19:36

of their humanity. It

19:38

is very powerful to

19:40

see yourself represented after living in a

19:42

country or even being born here. You

19:45

know, my parents have been here for almost 50 years. So

19:50

I think it's, you know, we say

19:52

that representation matters. And then you see people watching

19:55

themselves for the very first time in

19:57

this way. It is very moving. Yeah.

20:00

Let's reverse a little bit. I'm

20:03

very interested in your editing process and

20:05

how, like, you know. It's a monster.

20:07

Yeah, I want to see, like, what

20:09

was on the cutting floor, like, how

20:11

did it go? You

20:14

know, it's interesting when we were talking to, I

20:16

didn't work with my normal editor, she wasn't available. You

20:19

know, first I was interviewing editors, some

20:22

editors want to put it in chronological

20:24

order. And I was just very

20:26

much against that concept. I knew that that wouldn't be

20:28

the right thing. So I found this Iranian editor

20:30

in England and then I also worked

20:32

with the comedy editor as the last

20:35

pass. It was a lot

20:37

of putting together a puzzle. And

20:41

also what I learned in the edit process is

20:43

really interesting is that in the

20:45

first version of the film I didn't

20:47

have a significant amount of voiceover for

20:49

Leila. But I knew it was

20:51

important in the edit process, I do a lot of

20:54

testing of friends and family. It was

20:56

important that she has a very clear and distinct

20:59

voice, like, particularly in

21:01

voiceover, so that when the mother

21:03

interrupts the story, that

21:05

interruption becomes very powerful because

21:07

the narrator changes. So the

21:09

narrator needed to be extremely present. And

21:12

that was something that we developed in the

21:14

post process. We did a lot of, she

21:16

was shooting another series. I would send her,

21:19

every day I'd send her a list of things to

21:21

record. Because I was just writing and I'm very much,

21:24

when I work, I do a lot of rehearsals and we

21:26

do a lot of improv. So I

21:28

would send her like 10 lines a day

21:30

to record. I didn't know if they would work.

21:33

And every day 10 more lines. So we really

21:35

recorded hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of lines before

21:37

we got to the 30 lines

21:39

that are in the movie. Oh wow. Yeah.

21:42

So it's supposed to be funny and playful. So

21:44

it's trial and error

21:46

sort of thing. So on set, like you did

21:49

improv as well as like the script? I

21:52

don't really have time for improv on set.

21:54

So my process is... And then rehearsal process.

21:56

We shot six day weeks. So I only

21:58

had one day off. And on

22:00

that one day off, we would

22:03

all go together as a family to have dinner

22:05

and we would be together. And

22:07

then at the end, we would dance and joke around. And

22:09

then we would read the scenes for the week. And

22:12

then in that, I would have my assistant. And

22:14

I would say, try this or try that. Or we would make

22:17

a joke and we would add the joke. And

22:20

then it's just someone who helps, you know, then

22:22

create new pages to be sent out. But then

22:24

once we got on set, we were just like,

22:26

it's an indie film. We shot in 31 days.

22:29

So it was like, running gone, running gone.

22:31

You would read it six

22:34

days. Six weeks, 31 days. Yeah, it was

22:36

crazy. I was very tired. But

22:38

yeah, I think, but through that process,

22:41

that one day of rehearsal was really

22:43

important to us. And, you

22:45

know, like the character that plays the mother, she

22:47

choreographed all of the line dances of the

22:49

wedding because she thought all this family would have

22:52

their own line dance. So

22:54

they would do that on their day off. And then

22:57

the opening sequence, obviously, as a choreographer, they did a

22:59

lot of work together. So

23:01

there was never a day off, for sure. What

23:03

an indie filmmaking. I know. But

23:09

I think that's, we really solidified

23:11

as a family because every

23:14

minute we head off, we were together. And

23:16

so that was a really helpful part of the process. And

23:20

for the last question, tell

23:22

us about like, you know, bringing this out

23:24

in the world, like how is Sundance? I

23:28

was mostly afraid of my mother, so I'm not

23:31

going to lie. Luckily,

23:33

you know, first my brothers were like, yeah, because

23:35

I cast people that are better looking than them. So

23:37

they were really happy. My

23:40

mom, you know, for all of her life, she

23:42

said, this is a shameful story and we should

23:44

never talk about it. And then

23:46

she gave me the permission to make it. And

23:49

it was truly something else. I think

23:52

for her to experience that with an

23:54

audience. And

23:56

she had told me that before I made the film, it's time that we

23:58

tell our own stories. break the silence.

24:01

Now she has seven granddaughters. It's

24:04

a whole new generation. So, you know, I

24:06

think her best review was, you

24:08

did us justice. So that's

24:11

all we can ask for. And a beautiful note

24:13

to end on. Thank you.

24:15

Thanks, everybody. Thanks

24:18

for listening to another DGA Q&A. The

24:21

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