Rehearsals for a Revolution
تمرینهایی برای یک انقلاب
Receiving the highest documentary prize at Cannes, this inspired essay movie channels the tumult of Iranian history into a personal account of loss.
Living in exile in the UK, actor/director Pegah Ahangarani (I Am Trying to Remember, MIFF 2022) wants to make a film about Iranian history, as a way to understand how the country ended up where it is today. Fashioning home movies, archival imagery, news footage, animated sequences and sobering statistics into a singular cinematic essay, she chronicles conflict and rebellion across the decades, from 1979’s Islamic Revolution to the 2026 massacre of protesters and war with Israel and the United States. Ahangarani stages this history lesson in five chapters, each dedicated to a friend or family member she lost along the way, poignantly situating her film at the intersection of the personal and the political.
Born in 1984 to filmmakers Manijeh Hekmat (Bandar Band, MIFF 2021) and Jamshid Ahangarani, Pegah Ahangarani grew up intertwined with cinema and the post-revolution history of her homeland. Rehearsals for a Revolution is steeped in both, drawing on clips from her father’s old movies and mobile phone footage captured on the front lines of the 2009 Green Wave protests; but it also dwells in the here and now, intimately capturing scenes from Ahangarani’s current life in London with her newborn daughter. Winning the 2026 L’Œil d’or at Cannes, this documentary vividly interrogates what it means – and costs – to resist.
“Gripping and revelatory … Ahangarani’s film is both confessional and granular, finding thoughtful ways to mirror her family’s collective experience of political optimism and disillusionment.” – BFI
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