Directed by Ali Samadi Ahadi
The Green Wave uses actual blog entries, tweets and cell phone video, along with eyewitness accounts, expert interviews and animated sequences to tell the story behind Iran's youth-driven Green Revolution and the Government's violent response. The film captures the spirit of hope and possibility that united the protesters and that has since spread across the Middle East.
In countries like Iran, filmmakers have long learned they need to rely on other means rather than government controlled media outlets. Director Ali Samadi Ahadi used thousands of entries in Iranian blogs and social media websites to create two fictional characters, students whose hopes, fears and experiences with terror at the hands of government security thugs filter through the movie. These deeply moving fictional 'storylines' have been animated and supplemented with interviews with prominent human rights campaigners and exiled Iranians to complete a picture of the tragedy of the Green Revolution.
To watch powerful footage of Iran's 2009 Green Revolution and events leading to the elections of June 12th that year is to feel the hope and the explosive energy of the people ready for a change from the oppressive regime. This is the story of crushed hope, but it is also the story of youth, their energy, their thirst for change and their endless inventiveness in finding new tools of a revolution.
Reviews
~ "The Green Wave tells its deeply moving story three ways, using animation, on-camera interviews and extensive documentary footage to show us a moment in history that reveals more about itself each time it is examined." - Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times
~ "This is a highly recommended film and an essential source for understanding contemporary Iran and the systematic suppression of dissent that fomented the Arab Spring uprisings across the Middle East beginning in late 2010". - EMRO
~ "In both form and content, the filmmaker refuses the orthodoxˇThat [ director] Ahadi and his team were able to safely compile, let alone edit together, this much ground-level footage is a feat in and of itself; that it comes together in such a compelling manner makes it almost vital". - Village Voice
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