Children who were born in “prison”!/ I did not emphasize the crime of the mothers

Charso Press: Haniyeh Yousefian about her new documentary called “Kindergarten”, which is a product of the Center for the Development of Documentary, Experimental and Animated Cinema and is being prepared for screening at the “Cinemavegetir” festival. He said: This documentary is about children who are born in prison and are under 2 years old and have never seen the outside of prison. It means that they have been in prison since they were born and grew up there with their mothers. The mothers of these children are criminals for various reasons and their crime is drug trafficking, murder, etc.

He added: “That’s why I depicted the growing up of these children and how they live in prison.” Four children are the main characters in the documentary “Kindergarten” and their friendships, games, living and relationships with their mothers are shown in this documentary.

Emphasizing that the location of the documentary “Kindergarten” is in Qarchak Prison, Yousefian continued: “The kindergarten is in the prison where the children spend 2 hours every day and spend their lives in this kindergarten, that’s why the documentary is called “Kindergarten”. “Child”. It means a special kindergarten built in the prison and these children go there.

I don’t know what the reactions to “Kindergarten” will be

This documentary maker also said about his prediction of the reactions to his new documentary: It has been a few years since the audience of the festival has been different, for example, in the early 90s, the audience of the festival was different, then I could predict how the reception of the works would be, but I cannot say this year. . Considering how many people I’ve shown the documentary “Kindergarten” to, it’s had pretty good reactions.

He added: The point that I have emphasized in this documentary is that 2-year-old children cannot speak very much, and we can convey concepts more with their games and movements. So I don’t know how much the audience can relate to such a topic. Because I have always dealt with children and have been a children’s photographer for a long time, I can relate to such topics, but I don’t know how the audience will react.

This director continued: “Maybe the audience in the documentary “Kindergarten” expects to deal more with mothers, but I have not emphasized the crime of mothers and their condemnation at all. In addition, I felt the emptiness of such a topic in Iranian documentary cinema, that children are the main subject in this type of issue. In fact, I have rarely seen how children live and grow in documentary cinema. This is why I say that the documentary “Kindergarten” is not about adults, but about children who have no idea of ​​freedom and do not know what freedom is, and their main home is prison. Children for whom prison is a safe house and they are also in prison simply because their mothers are in prison.

Don’t look for specific audiences for “truth”.

Yousefian explained: If we want to have a busy and exciting festival, the documentary maker should be given importance, and if there is no documentary maker, then there is no festival at all. It means that the quality of documentation is important first. A festival is a festival when there is no planning for the participants, and this point makes the festival exciting, rather than trying to bring a certain audience to the festival with planning and policies.

In the end, he said: Why should there be a special audience in the festival? It is true that documentary cinema is not acceptable to everyone. For example, I remember I had a documentary in the festival in 1994, and an old lady thanked me after watching it, and I was very happy because it is not only us documentary makers who are the audience, but also other people, and the festival was like this. He was moving forward. There are a series of annoyances that no effort is made to resolve these annoyances, and it continues in this way, in which case the documentary makers present their works to festivals abroad. First of all, these annoyances should be resolved and this is how the festival becomes important.

The documentary crew of “Kindergarten” includes cinematographer, writer and director: Haniye Yousefian, research: Masoud Ebrahimi and Haniye Yousefian, assistant director and sound: Sara Emaminia, editor: Arash Zahedi, sound: Amin Sharifi, graphics and advertising: Taha Zaker, Production center for the development of documentary, experimental and animation cinema.