The Lineage of Love: An Interview with Maryam Keshavarz
Iranian-American director Maryam Keshavarz discusses culture, love, and her Sundance award-winning film, The Persian Version.
Pola Pucheta
As we move through reflection on love and limerence, a cultural examination is in order. Can established practices and culture around love can be traced through our ancestral lineage as much as our food, music, or language?
The Persian Version by Maryam Keshavaraz explores just that. The film made its debut at Sundance 2023, where it earned the Audience Award in the U.S. Dramatic Competition and The Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award before getting acquired by Sony Pictures. The director’s third narrative and fourth feature film paints the picture of three generations of Iranian-American women—each one trying on the roles assigned to them within society, their cultures, and their own family. Sometimes fitted, sometimes fit-inducing.
I resonated with the narrative on many levels—having a similar tradition of oral storytelling turned familial history within my own immigrant family. I’ve shared attempts at weaving that legacy within the fabric of my creative career as a writer, documentarian, and storyteller.
I sat down to speak on the phone with Maryam on a Friday night. She calls me from the tarmac, having just concluded a day full of meetings in New York before heading back to LA. Somehow, she still finds a moment to chat with me about all the different shades of love in The Persian Version, and the intricacies of finding your voice as a first-generation American storyteller.
PD: The authenticity in this story is so apparent, and as I understand it’s based on your own family experience, and family secrets at that! Was it a collaborative process at all?
MK: It was not collaborative in the traditional sense. Nobody had seen the film or scripts until Sundance. I had told them I was making a film, that my brothers were very prevalent in it, and I interviewed my mom formally for the actress that was playing her. But I've been hearing these stories my whole life. I think to the moment that I realized that my mother is, in essence, a writer, by coming to America and rewriting our destiny. I realized that she had to be a narrator, that she had to take control of the narrative reins. That was like a big breakthrough—when I realized that my mother, in many ways, had rewritten her story. So I guess in that way, she's been collaborating with me her whole life.
PD: What were their reactions to the film?
MK: My mom's reaction to my first film wasn't the best. For this one, when I came out of the cinema, I couldn't find my mom. When I finally saw her, she grabbed my face, and I was afraid she was going to slap me in front of my lawyer and my agent. But then she said, “You did me justice”. It was very meaningful. After that, I didn’t care what the reviewers said.
PD: I think as a fellow first-generation creative, we’re fed this narrative that we have to mine & extract our intergenerational trauma for our art. How do you honor, rather than extract?
MK: Part of my process—and maybe getting older and having had my own daughter—is really trying to understand the characters and never judge them. Trying to understand your family or different generations as young people is such a great exercise in humanity, because we always think of our parents as adults, rather than people with aspirations. I think what my mom also responded to was that there was no filler story. Everyone's trying. I tried to really empathize and understand why they did what they did. I think all these elements are important in writing stories, to make them more nuanced and more authentic.
PD: And that empathy is so powerful! Just as powerful as all the love depicted in the film. Familial love, obviously, but also self-love as the main character searches for a sense of belonging, culturally and within her own family. What were you thinking about in the way you wanted to portray shades of love, affection & intimacy within your film?
MK: You need love to deal with trauma, and we are talking about generational trauma. How do you break the cycle of that? That's an important question that we have to ask ourselves. It's an active process of forgiveness after an event.
PD: Yeah, somehow these two characters who feel maybe alienated from each other are still able to have so much influence over each other and their ways of loving.
MK: Sometimes, when you describe your family dynamics or behaviors non immigrants or white Americans have this reaction like, “she's so horrible!” And you have to explain that there’s still love there. And I think it is complicated. Even the idea that you can’t say that you have your own desires— my mothers always repressed her own desires for her family. Then you realize, wow, this person actually is much more involved than we give them credit for. Yes, it's complicated. Yes, they judge you, but also they love you. And it's, it's all of those things simultaneously. And we're not perfect. We're all products of our environment.
PD: And there’s this other dimension of queerness and its representation within the film. I was wondering, how do you hold that tension between telling a story that's true to your experience, but isn't damaging to others' perception of your family or your culture? Is that something that you think about?
MK: And that's the thing is, I think by showing all the shades, I don't find that that's damaging. Maybe some people would, and I think within the context of everyone's different shades of existence. Everyone evolves and moves forward in what they believe to be the right path. And also because within our culture, it's very homosocial. There's different levels of queerness. You know, how is that expressed? There's such a gray line between the deep friendships of women and attractions where the lines cross, and I don't think it's as clean as people think. You know, it's much more gray.
PD: It makes you think more about which kinds of love in society are more valued. I mean, the most intimate love powerful love that I've experienced has actually been in my friendships rather than my romantic relationships
PD: Music and pop music seem so important to the film—I love the way it's front and center. People can be so dismissive of pop music sometimes in the same way they can be dismissive of romcoms as a genre. I love the rendition of the Dire Straits’ Romeo and Juliet–although I am partial to the Killers’ cover of that song— And I was wondering, do you have another favorite love song?
MK: Oh, my God, I have so many. This is my first romcom, but I'm a die hard romantic. But pop music was so transformative. It's so interesting, because pop music particularly in that era before the internet was something that has such a huge cultural impact internationally. I think about how transgressive and transnational pop music is. And as someone who had literally carried it from one world to the other—it was such an important way to be connected to different cultures, different parts of the world.During the Iran-Iraq War, Bollywood film was such a big thing in Iran. People were taping them and bringing them over, and all the colors of Bollywood are such a respite to the gloominess of war. The big dance number was my crack at a Bollywood rendition of American music.
PD: I loved it so much—seeing the joyfulness on screen. And I love the emotional journey. Going through the film, I laughed, I cried, and just having it culminate there was an important moment for me. I feel deeply passionate about more people in my life seeing this movie. Is there anything you can say about when or how people might be able to see the film?
MK: Yeah, it'll be in theaters nationwide starting at the end of September.
Pola Pucheta is a first-generation queer creative based in Brooklyn, NY. Her work is informed by a passion for familial legacy, introspection, and investigating vulnerable spaces. When she's not hosting the NEW RECORDING podcast, she works as a documentary professional at Brown Girls Doc Mafia. You can follow her on Instagram, and find her podcast wherever you stream.
