The exiled Iranian film star

last updated 8 January 2015

Golshifteh Farahani can never go home, said Fiachra Gibbons in The Guardian (U.K.). Earlier this year, the celebrated Iranian actress appeared in a short black-and-white film to promote the Césars—France’s Oscars—alongside some 30 other young stars. Each actor exposed a part of his or her body in the promo, and Farahani chose to reveal her right breast. What followed in Iran was a cultural earthquake. “It was a catastrophe,” says Farahani, 29, her head dropping into her hands. “I don’t know exactly how many tens of millions of people typed my name into Google the next day.” The official Fars news agency in Tehran issued a communiqué condemning her as the “hidden, disgusting face of cinema,” and her family received death threats. Farahani is now living in exile in Paris, but refuses to be treated like a victim. “I am just an actor and I want to work,” she says. “The whole world wants to see you as a victim, because they see you miserable and they feel good. That is why French people are so obsessed with causes like Syria. It is a kind of pornography to make them feel better about themselves, but they don’t give a s---. They say, ‘Come, we will look after you,’ and then they f--- you up and don’t give you papers.”