Maryam Keshavarz on Embracing Her Family History, Cinematic Risks, and Lots of Dancing For ‘The Persian Version’

I remember watching My Big Fat Greek Wedding for the first time as an eight-year-old and being absolutely delighted by the loud, boisterous, boundary-lacking, loving family I saw on screen. It was the closest I’d ever come to seeing a culture like mine on screen.

In the years that followed, and as my love of movies grew, I searched for any positive representation of Persians, and with rare exceptions, all I was met with were harsh, stereotypical, caricatures rooted in misguided politics.

Enter Maryam Keshavarz’s The Persian Version. A coming-of-age dramedy centered on three generations of Iranian women and the secrets that bind them.

What a joy it was to see the music, food, and dancing I grew up with in a major Hollywood movie. But more importantly, with The Persian Version, I finally got to see the Iranian-American experience treated with the empathy and dignity it deserves.

Keshavarz has expertly layered a multicultural search for identity with all the beauty and pain that comes with the singular complexity of the mother-daughter (played by Niousha Noor and Layla Mohammadi) relationship. And she’s done so with major style and empathy for all involved. The Persian Version, named to NBR’s list of the best movies of the year, establishes Keshavarz as a major filmmaking force. The cultural references are fun, but it’s Keshavarz’s vision and directorial flare that makes The Persian Version pop, and a film I’m comfortable recommending regardless of your background.

Here, Keshavarz gives insight into some of the stylistic choices behind The Persian Version and discusses how making peace with her past brought forth the largely autobiographical film. Please be aware the following interview contains spoilers for The Persian Version. Proceed with caution.

Awards Daily: First off, thank you for the amazing Persian girl representation. The Persian Version brought me so much joy.

Maryam Keshavarz: I’m so glad. I love hearing that.

AD: I wanted to start with the part that I found the most relatable; Leila (Layla Mohammadi) says, ‘You’re not Persian enough for Iran, and you’re not American enough for America.’

Is that something that you still struggle with? And was something that you were worried about going into the film, whether the references would be too Persian or not enough?

MK: Actually, I made this film to deal with that in many ways, just to say that I’m neither; I’m both.

In the past, my films would go to film festivals, and it was like, ‘Who is this girl? Is she American? Is she Iranian?’ It was so confusing. I thought, ‘It’s time to embrace both of those.’ 

As a kid, I would go to Iran, and I’d have to explain what America was like. And in America, I’d have to explain to Americans what Iran was like. With the movie, I thought I’d take you on a journey that takes you through both.

AD: What areas of The Persian Version are most rooted in your own personal experiences, and where did you take some liberties?

MK: Well, it’s almost entirely autobiographical. I mean, small things are changed. Like, my father had died when my daughter was born. And some things are heightened for comedic effect. My brothers are not such great runners. But it’s mostly autobiographical, I have to say. I really tried to stay true to what it was like to discover this big secret and what it did to me, trying to understand in a deeper way who I am, who my mother is, and where I come from. 

AD: One of the things I found so compelling about The Persian Version is the different devices you use to tell the story. We have little animated elements, dance numbers, switches in perspectives, and breaking the fourth wall. 

MK: Well, I knew from the beginning that the Leila character would break the fourth wall because I knew that she had to lead the audience through such a complicated world.

I didn’t want to be like, ‘Oh, this is the footage of Iran from way back when.’ I’m so not interested in that. I wanted us to show this mentality of someone from two cultures and how she held all these ideas in her head. So, we enter the world from her perspective. 

The structure is discovering a secret, and the structure is three women who each have a version of the story and a different style—Leila’s more 80s, 90s rom-com. The grandmother tells big tales, so she’s a spaghetti Western. And the mother is more of the Kiarostami-type. It wasn’t until I really cracked the idea of [the film] being a mother-daughter story that I understood that the mother would also have to break the fourth wall because she was the other narrator, demanding to tell her own story.

Breaking the fourth wall is a challenging thing. I kept thinking, ‘Should I do this?’ I had written a script, and then I saw something called Fleabag, and I was like, ‘Oh, it can totally work to bring the audience closer. Sometimes, it can feel like a very alienating device, but it can also bring the audience closer to the character.

The film certainly uses a lot of different techniques. I’m mid-career, and I thought, ‘Why the boundaries? Let’s use everything that would make it possible to tell the story in the best way.

AD: I’m curious about the evolution of the story— where you started versus where you ended up. Was it always part of the plan to have multiple narratives? 

MK: I always knew it was Leila who would take us on this journey of the secret. I didn’t realize that the two main narratives and the breaking of the fourth wall would be the mother and daughter until, as I was writing, There were other stories of the father and the brothers. It was much bigger. It was a 170-page script originally. And then I thought, ‘What is the story about? Why is she interested in the secrets?’ She wants to know who she is and to know that, she needs to know her mother. Once I was able to locate it as a mother-daughter story, everything else fell away, and then we were trying to find out the secret, but through the perspective of these three different women— that became the structure, and everything else got taken away so the script ended up being a 90- page, much more focused script.

AD: Did working on The Persian Version lead you to find the answers that you were looking for? 

MK: I mean, I learned so much about empathy. And I think when structuring the film, I was trying to make the mother more unlikeable in the beginning and then have the audience bawling at the end.

Part of my strategy is that we judge people so readily— someone in our family, our neighbors— for some ideas they have, potentially something they’ve said, and we never go beyond that. So, it was forcing the audience not to like her initially and then dismantle that initial judgment. I always had that in my mind. I think it was challenging for some people as I was developing the edit of the film, this whole idea of, ‘Is she too unlikable in the beginning?’

 And also, [The Persian Version] is based on my family. I think the structure was very important to me in that so much is withheld early in the film, and then slowly, we start to understand who these people are. We don’t know the mother’s story until the very end, which is not a typical structure, but it was important for me to have you think you know her. And as I was writing, I was like, ‘Oh my god, I really don’t know my parents.’ I tried to think of them and what it was like [for my mother] to be 14 and get married.

 When I cast a 14-year-old, and I had her reading the lines, it was disarming to me because it wasn’t an idea anymore.

I was seeing an actual 14-year-old embody this person and these ideas. And it made me realize how young my parents were, how young my mother was. It really made me think and made me reevaluate everything that I thought I knew. It expanded my empathy and understanding of their journey, what it meant to leave the old country, and all the things they had to do to come here.

And this idea of strength is silence. Why is someone silent? How do they deal with trauma? When Leila says: I inherited that—there’s this idea that this coping mechanism is passed down from the maternal line. I certainly do that a lot of times. 

So, you have the silence of the mother character in real life, but in the cinematic life, she breaks the fourth wall. The mother is empowered with the breaking of the fourth wall, even though in her real life, she remained silent. It was important for me to give that character that power.

I learned so much. And I also learned so much about myself in that process.

 AD: I wanted to ask you about all the Persian cultural references that I loved, like when the bride and the groom come in, and the audience is doing the Kel cheering (a traditional, ceremonial style of yodeling) or Ghormeh Sabzi (Persian stew), Sattar’s music. I mean, there are three dance sequences in this movie!

 MK: We’re Persians! You walk into parties, you dance! [Laughs].

AD: Was there a specific reference or something that you fought for? Something that was particularly important for you to include in the film?

MK: There’s a lot of references, I think, that only Persians will get. Little jokes that are sprinkled throughout. Even in the choice of music, there’s Googoosh and Sattar. There’s also underground rock, Golden Ring; their music was lost until recently. They’re a rock band from the late 60s in Iran. I had a really supportive team because, for me, music was such an important part of telling the story of the interaction of East and West through music and through the songs.

But you know, like in the dinner scene, one of the brothers says, “Mage Ghazvini hasti?” It’s not translated because no one knows that joke unless you’re Persian. So there are a couple of little things that I just left in for our people.

AD: I love that. 

MK: It’s surprising. [The Persian Version] was funded by Sony. It’s a very specific story. You know, when the film was financed, it was three people who decided it would get financed. It was a gay man from, I think, Kansas, a Jewish man, and an Indian woman, and all three of them said that it was just like their families. And I thought that was so interesting; even though it’s so specific, people reflect themselves in it.

AD: Yes! Seeing the incredible reaction to The Persian Version, which won the audience prize at Sundance, I’m so moved that something specific to us has touched many different people.

What has that meant to you?

MK: That was my whole point. It’s like all of this rhetoric that’s been going around about Iranians our entire lives. Particularly when Trump came into office. We’re shown in such a way that makes us so alien and so unknowable. We recently had an event in New York, and the head of the NYPD came. His wife is in the film academy. He’s the head of the NYPD, and he’s like, ‘This is like my Irish family.’ He had never met an Iranian before, and now he feels connected to this culture. That’s important for me. There is an interconnection between our American identities, and we’re not these aliens.

It does move me that Persians love it. It moves me that Chinese-Americans love it. It moves me that people we consider ‘White’ Americans love it too. That was part of the goal. I think we’re so fun! Who wouldn’t love us? 

AD: Exactly! [Laughs]. Maryam, I have to let you go. Are there any final thoughts you’d like to share?

MK: Honestly, I’m just glad to be able to put forth my family story and the story of my culture in a fun, elevated way. And we get to have our own great immigrant story. It’s about time. And I hope, now that this is out there, distributed by a major studio, other people will get a chance to also do their story.

The Persian Version is available on all VOD platforms.