Documentary: A Sisters' Tale
"[...]they put their head out of the water, and they breathe."
Coming to Doc Edge Festival 2025, A Sisters’ Tale is a moving documentary following the life of Nasreen Amini, as filmed by her sister Leila Amini over the course of seven years. Craccum received the opportunity to view a screener before the festival begins for this short review.
In Iran, women have been forbidden from singing in public since 1979. Despite this, Nasreen holds a dream of singing unfettered by law and tradition. The documentary is a deeply intimate record of Nasreen’s courage as she pursues her dream, resisting the role that has been put on her by the world.
And he said: “But you’re a successful person. You have two kids.”
It is not only that the state itself has outlawed Nasreen’s voice. Married to a traditional and unavailable husband, she is in a vulnerable position where she must rely on him for everything. He is unsupportive of her dream of becoming a singer, to the point where she has to borrow money for singing lessons from her 11-year old son. Nasreen’s ambition goes against her culture — she is expected first and foremost to be a dutiful wife and mother, there is no space for her as an individual. These restrictions are not enough to kill the passion for music in her, and through Leila’s lens we are let into a personal account of Nasreen’s perseverance. She struggles taking destiny into her own hands, with emotional conversations she has with her family showing us the responsibilities she shoulders and the pain they bring. She is told repeatedly to think about her children, about the fact that she is financially dependent on her husband, and not do anything rash.
But her dream is not small enough to be content residing in the walls of her home. Nasreen puts it best herself: “But I have courage. But I keep my dignity. It is humiliating to stay with him out of fear.” She has courage to weather the suffering that is imposed on her as a consequence of disobeying patriarchal expectations and wider social constraints women face in her country. She works, she raises her two young children, she makes music underground. Nasreen’s resistance may be quiet, but it expresses the desires of so many women like her all across Iran, and all over the world — the desire to be seen for who they are, the desire to have the freedom to pursue what they want to be. In the film itself we see how her courage has a ripple effect that empowers her children, sisters and mother; now that more of us are able to see her journey as told through Leila’s vulnerable snapshots into their lives, her personal liberation has the power to inspire us too.
Some personal impressions follow, so those of you who are uninterested in those please feel free to skip to the end and get the tickets!
The documentary feels like the start of a home movie, with the director taking close-ups of her family like she is simply recording memories to reflect on later. There is a scene where Nasreen’s husband is shown coming home close to midnight: the family are laughing and teasing him about it, and the scene ends with him saying “We are such a happy family.” Most families have videos like that, taken when children are young and they want to record a lot of videos to capture daily happiness. However, most families stick to filming the good times. Leila faithfully captures the bad, too – the couple fighting, the children crying from hearing them yelling, Nasreen crying in her car. The vulnerable close ups, the camera cutting off when Nasreen asks Leila to hug her – I am made to feel like I am in Leila’s shoes.
When she comforts her niece and nephew, when she reassures Nasreen that she will be there for her just as Nasreen has for her, it helps me understand just how Nasreen has maintained her passion for singing despite the 15 years of her unhappy marriage and a society that shuns women who sing, preferring them voiceless and dependent on men. It is therefore not enough that Nasreen finds a way to continue singing, it is the fact that she regains her voice and her strength. After seeing Nasreen putting on make-up for a neglectful husband who will not even visit her in the hospital, I find it heartening that she finds the courage to give up on changing herself when he will not. Nasreen says she wants to communicate the word ‘hope’ to other women through her music, and so she does through her life as well.
Doc Edge Festival is in Auckland from 25 June through to 13 July. The festival will also be showing in Christchurch and Wellington (16 July - 27 July).
A Sisters’ Tale will be premiering in Auckland on the 3rd and the 6th of July.
John Lau
