Censoring an Iranian Love Story

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BBC Radio 4 Extra

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Kevork Malikyan

Philip Arditti

Isabella Nefar

Amir El-Masry

Raad Rawi

Mia Soteriou

Beatrice Butler

Shahriar Mandanipour

Sara Khalili

Hattie Naylor

Nicolas Jackson

Censoring an Iranian Love Story: Episode 1

Episode 1

BBC Radio 4 - Censoring an Iranian Love Story, Episode 1

Contemporary drama from Iran. A writer must cheat the censor to publish his love story.

A writer must cheat the censor to publish his love story. Contemporary drama from Iran. Stars Isabella Nefar and Amir El-Masry.

Contemporary drama from Iran. A writer must cheat the censor to publish his love story. 

In order for his book to receive a publishing permit, the writer must convince Mr Petrovich, the all-powerful censor at the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, that it will not provoke sin in the mind of the reader. 

His characters, Sara and Dara, meet at a riot and are obliged to hide their encounters from both their families and the regime's Campaign Against Social Corruption, the feared citizen-guardians of Islamic morality. Gender separation is rigorously enforced and illicit passion punished so the lovers exercise their creativity to meet in secret amid the bustling streets of Tehran, in an empty cinema and a hospital A&E unit. Discovery would mean imprisonment, or even death. 

Yet writing freely of their encounters puts the writer in as much peril as his own fictional lovers in this Farsi "Fahrenheit 451".

Written by Shahriar Mandanipour.

Dramatised in two parts by Hattie Naylor from the translation by Sara Khalili.  

Petrovich    ......    Philip Arditti
Sara    ......    Isabella Nefar
Dara    ......    Amir El-Masry
Jafar    ......    Raad Rawi
Golshiri    ......    Raad Rawi
Stepmother    ......    Mia Soteriou
Librarian    ......    Mia Soteriou
Young Dara    ......    Beatrice Butler 

Executive Producer: Sara Davies
Sound Design by James Morgan and Steve Bond
Music by Gorkem Sen.
Director:  Nicolas Jackson

An Afonica production for BBC Radio 4, first broadcast in August 2018.

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Contemporary drama from Iran. A writer must cheat the censor to publish his love story. By Shahriar Mandanipour and dramatised by Hattie Naylor from Sara Khalili's translation.

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