The Queen and I

Accused by the Islamic regime of having monarchic sympathies as a result of Prostitution Behind the Veil, her award winning documentary about the plight of two Iranian prostitutes, filmmaker Nahid Persson responds by crafting this cinematic portrait of the last Iranian queen, Farah, who now lives abroad. In the late 1970s, during the Iranian Revolution, Persson assisted the effort to dispose of the shah, the Iranian king. And while Persson's personal political views may stand in direct contrast to those held by Farah, the filmmaker and the aristocrat ultimately form an improbable yet undeniably warm connection during the course of filming The Queen and I. Over the course of the two years it took to produce the film, the director and the now seventy year-old queen engage in conversation covering a variety of topics. But there's one subject that Persson expressly avoids for fear of offending her subject: The shah's merciless regime. By avoiding this white elephant topic, the filmmaker raises many interesting questions concerning the sacrifices a filmmaker is willing to make in order to gain access to their subject, and how far the filmmaker is willing to bend in order to help maintain said subject's carefully crafted public persona.