Iranian Women You Should Know: Shahla Riahi

Global and Iranian history are both closely intertwined with the lives and destinies of prominent figures. Every one of them has laid a brick on history’s wall, sometimes paying the price with their lives, men and women alike. Women have been especially influential in the past 200 years, writing much of contemporary Iranian history.

In Iran, women have increased public awareness about gender discrimination, raised the profile of and improved women’s rights, fought for literacy among women, and promoted the social status of women by counteracting religious pressures, participating in scientific projects, being involved in politics, influencing music, cinema... And so the list goes on.

This series aims to celebrate these renowned and respected Iranian women. They are women who represent the millions of women that influence their families and societies on a daily basis. Not all of the people profiled in the series are endorsed by IranWire, but their influence and impact cannot be overlooked. The articles are biographical stories that consider the lives of influential women in Iran.

IranWire readers are invited to send in suggestions for how we might expand the series. Contact IranWire via email (info@iranwire.com), on Facebook, or by tweeting us.

An Iranian citizen journalist, who writes under a pseudonym to protect her identity, wrote the following article from inside Iran.

* * *

These days, Shahla Riahi cannot remember that she became the first woman film director in Iran in 1956. At 90, after a lifetime in cinema and TV, she suffers from memory loss.

Riahi was born Ghodrat-Zaman Vafadoost in Tehran in 1926. Her father, who was known as Sheikh Agha, was the head of the Justice Department in the shrine city of Mashhad. In 1926, her father traveled to Tehran as a representative to the assembly that transferred the Persian crown from the moribund Qajar dynasty to the military strongman Reza Pahlavi. Sheikh Agha already had a family in Mashhad, but took a teenage girl as his second wife in Tehran. Upon returning to Mashhad, he learned that his Tehran bride was pregnant, but he never got to see his daughter because he died of a heart attack a few days after she was born. Shahla’s mother, who was only 16 then, remarried.

Riahi grew up in her grandparents’ care. But her mother’s remarriage changed her life. Her stepfather had a nephew by the name of Esmail Riahi. When the two met years later, Esmail fell in love and asked to marry her. They married in 1941.

Esmail was a schoolteacher, but he had also appeared in a movie and several plays. In 1944, he introduced Riahi to the director Moez-o-Divan Fekri Ershad, a pioneer of Iranian theater and cinema. Ershad was about to stage a play about Caliph Harun al-Rashid and chose Shahla to play the female lead. At 18, she started a career that would last for decades.

“Quit or I Will Kill You”

She did not have an easy start. Her family was religious and conservative. When they learned that she had appeared on stage, they reacted furiously. Her mother, her grandmother and her half-sisters all wore black and declared that she was dead to them. They also sent one of her sisters to spy on her.  “She donned a chador and in the evening came to the theater where I was performing to see what I was doing and report back to my brother,” Riahi once told an interviewer. “My brother, who was in the military, sent me a message from Mashhad saying, ‘I will come to Tehran to either get your divorce or kill you both.’”

Esmail, however, fully supported her. She continued acting, and in 1951, she made her screen debut in the film Golden Dreams, a fantasy directed by Fekri Ershad.

No Song, No Dance

Riahi’s success as a film actress developed quickly. With her penetrating eyes, she often played calm and self-sacrificing women. In 1956, she decided to direct her own movie, Marjan. “Marjan was a different kind of movie,” she later said. “It was really a turning point in Iranian cinema. It set an example for ‘village movies.’ Until then, [Iranian] movies were all about singing and dancing, fighting, chases, etcetera, but...the subject of this movie was designed to make you think.”

Marjan tells the sad tale of a gypsy girl whose tribe settles near a village. From poverty and desperation, her father steals a lamb belonging to the village school. The schoolteacher captures him and locks him up in the school. When Marjan goes to the village to visit her father, she meets the teacher and they gradually fall in love. But then the teacher moves to the city. Marjan follows him but is unable to find him. She starts work as a nurse in a hospital. Unbeknownst to her, the teacher has already married a girl from the city. When his wife is brought to the hospital to give birth, the two meet again, but he does not recognize her. Marjan returns to her tribe, dejected and heartbroken.

Critics praised the film, but it was not a commercial success. Shahla’s first experience as a director was also her last, but she continued acting in numerous plays, movies and TV dramas. She appeared in English plays such as Romeo and Juliet, the Merchant of Venice and Lady Windermere's Fan. In all, she acted in more than 70 movies and 20 TV series, the last of which was made in 2003.

Her marriage lasted nearly 70 years. Esmail died in 2010. After his death, Shahla's mental health declined. According to her daughter, Shahla wakes up at nights and searches for her departed husband, who stood with her throughout their married life.

Mona Ali Shahi, Citizen-Journalist, Tehran