Thursday evening, at the Montceau-les-Mines pier, the screening of the film “Chroniques de Tehran” left a lasting imprint in the spirits. The film, directed by Ali Asgari and Alireza Khatami, continues nine paintings that are both absurd, ironic and sometimes funny. What, on the surface, lend to smile. But very quickly, this laughs freezes.
Because behind the subtle humor hides a relentless reality. Daily, deaf, insidious oppression that gives cold in the back. As a spectator at the output confided, admiring the resistance capacity portrayed on the screen, “this film is scary, very afraid”.
This feeling, Louis Arnaud knows him intimately.
Arrested in Iran on September 28, 2022, he spent more than 20 months in detention before being released on June 13, 2024. Sentenced to five years in prison by the Revolutionary Court of Tehran for “propaganda” and “attack on state security”, his testimony, delivered that evening to more than 200 spectators, was one of the highlights of the evening. “In Iran, there is no more space to breathe,” he said, in a calm but firm voice.
Invited by the Société des Cinéments Panacéas and the Local Section of the Human Rights League, Montcellien has not eluded any questions. What he tells is striking: constantly excavated phones, the smallest signs of hunted rebellion, a population under constant surveillance.
“There, the guards of the revolution spend their time searching the laptops in search of the slightest clue to compromise someone. The Shiite regime, under the thumb of the clergy, claims to lead a fight of good against evil, targeting the United States and Israel. ”
And while the control intensifies, everything else collapses. “The Iranian economy is on their knees. There is an abyssal gap between the security obsession of the regime and the total abandonment of everyday life. Everyone watches everyone. Even the guards denounce each other. I saw that, with my own eyes, in prison ”.
For Louis Arnaud, one thing is clear: this diet must fall. But he wonders, lucidly: “The day he collapses, what will he stay?” “”
Iran, Louis Arnaud carries him in his heart as much as he knows him. Cradle of one of the oldest civilizations, the land of great thinkers like Avicenna, Omar Khayyam, Ferdowsi, Hafez or Rûmî, this country has shaped philosophy, science and poetry, far beyond its borders. Its architecture _ its domes, its paradise gardens, its mosques with delicate mosaics _ testifies to an exceptional refinement. And despite the injuries of the present, Iranian culture remains deeply rooted in this past grandeur.
This is all that Louis Arnaud wants to tell in a book that he will publish next February. A highly anticipated work, at the crossroads of personal account, political testimony and tribute to a people taken between light and darkness.
J.B.