REHEARSALS FOR A REVOLUTION

Through five intimate portraits of relatives and mentors, Iranian filmmaker Pegah Ahangarani traces more than four decades of resistance, repression, and resilience in REHEARSALS FOR A REVOLUTION. Drawing from a remarkable collection of personal archives, home videos, protest footage, newspaper clippings, and recorded voices, Ahangarani weaves her own life story into the turbulent history of modern Iran. Beginning with the 1979 Iranian Revolution and moving through generations of political upheaval to the war that erupted in 2026, the film explores how private lives become inseparable from a nation’s struggle for change. Each portrait reveals a different expression of resistance, together forming a deeply personal chronicle of people who continue to imagine another future despite censorship, violence, and displacement. Both memoir and collective testimony, Ahangarani’s film transforms fragments of memory into a powerful cinematic archive of a country perpetually caught between political repression and the enduring hope for revolution. World Premiere, Cannes Film Festival.