Rageh Omaar speaks out against war

Rageh Omar introduced his acclaimed documentary Inside Iran to over 300 people in Camden on June 14th. At a meeting organised by Campaign Iran and Camden Stop The War, Rageh set out his motivation behind producing the film: “I wanted to show the other Iran from the one usually shown by journalists constrained to ‘news’ stories, I wanted to go behind the rhetoric”.

Inside Iran follows Rageh around Tehran, from the upper class suburbs of North Teheran to the working class south where his Taxi driver Majid showed him a glimpse of Iranian family life, and in between met a wide range of Iranians, including Binyamin the pop star and 3 amazing women active in running their won business, making films and running an NGO for children with cancer.

At the meeting, Rageh emphasised that he had set out to make a documentary about people, about ordinary Iranians, and that part of the motivation behind that was the lack of ‘human’ images which came out of Iraq before the invasion. “The news was always about Saddam, perhaps if in the West we had been shown what ‘average’ Iraqis were like we would have had a clearer understanding of the impact of military action”.

Campaign Iran fully supports this view and believes that ordinary Iranians like those depicted in the documentary will suffer the most from war and sanctions. Well done Rageh.

View the film below: