In this post, he wrote: “The harassment of women is not limited to the film industry, but is a part of our society where dominant power is in the hands of men and women must turn to men to get work. The employer is a man, and if he is greedy, he may make unconventional proposals for hiring women.”
Earlier this week, Mohammad Mehdi Esmaili, Minister of Culture and Guidance of Raisi’s government, said: “Women filmmakers’ protests against sexual harassment will be addressed in the ethics committee of this ministry.”
Two months ago, a woman working in the film industry, detailing sexual, physical, and verbal harassment by a male actor, asked her colleagues to break their silence and, through confession and protest, cleanse cinema of sexual harassers.
Following the increase in revelations about sexual harassment of women behind the scenes of Iranian cinema, more than 300 women filmmakers issued a statement confirming “systematic and widespread insult, violence, and sexual harassment” against women active in this field and demanded that the matter be addressed.
The signatories of this statement listed disrespect with sexual and sexualized language, exploitation of silence and tolerance of individuals by threatening their job position or taking work rights and wages hostage, unwanted physical contact, pressure and coercion for sexual relations, and assault as some examples of such harassment.
In this statement, the House of Cinema was asked to form an independent committee with an absolute majority of women to investigate the relevant complaints and introduce lawyers and legal advisors to victims of sexual harassment.
The House of Cinema proposed that one of its committees investigate the complaints, but protesting women filmmakers rejected this proposal and formed an independent body to “investigate violence and harassment against women filmmakers.”
The global ‘Me Too’ movement was formed by women to protest sexual harassment. In Iran, from the summer of 1399, following the global ‘Me Too’ movement, Iranian women shared their experiences of sexual harassment on social networks, and in this process, the names of well-known men in the fields of cinema and art were raised.
Now, the joining of some Iranian male filmmakers to the movement supporting harassed women in the performing arts has increased hopes for the success of this campaign.
