Young Iranian woman director tells of women's plight

CANNES, France (Reuters) - An Iranian woman in a headscarf might seem out of place at the Cannes Film Festival, where starlets are exhibited in transparent gowns and sunbathers go topless.

But 18-year-old Samira Makhmalbaf, the youngest director ever invited to show a film at the French Riviera cinematic gathering, does not seem perturbed.

``I'm just happy that people from different countries can see my movie and maybe understand it, and it will not just be a film for Iran,'' she told Reuters in an interview.

Her film ``The Apple'' is not only drawn from a true-life story of 12-year-old twin girls locked in their house since birth but the people involved play their own characters.

It is not in competition for the festival's top prize, the Golden Palm.

The girls have not been washed since birth and cannot talk, read or interact normally with other people.

``I saw the report on TV and I found it very horrible and dark and I couldn't get it out of my mind. So I thought that if I could make some good of it and find the reason it happened, it might be better,'' Makhmalbaf said.

So she asked her father, director Mohsen Makhmalbaf, for a camera, went down to the poor neighborhood of Tehran where the girls lived and started shooting.

The result is a half documentary, half feature film about Massoumeh and Zahra Naderi and a social worker alerted by a neighborhood petition who finally convinces, or rather forces, their father to release them into the outside world.

Entrenched in Iran's Islamic patriarchal tradition he repeatedly justifies his actions, saying: ``My daughters are like flowers. Unmarried men are like the sun, they will make them wilt.''

Asked if she had any trouble with the Iranian authorities because of the subject matter, Makhmalbaf said: ``The most important thing was to have the permission of my father. I wanted to tell the story in depth and not waste time.''

The hour-and-a-half film was shot in 11 days and was originally meant to be a short film. ``I wanted to do it quickly before the girls had time to change because of their contact with society,'' she said.

Makhmalbaf stopped short of saying the film was a social statement about the place of women in Iranian society.

``It's about the condition of women and freedom, not only in Iran, but in the whole world, because women are always at a disadvantage,'' she said.

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