‘Rehearsals for a Revolution’ Review: A Perceptive, Poignant Chronicle of Great Hopes and Even Greater Disappointments

Rich in political and cultural resonance as well as contemporary relevance, the documentary essay “Rehearsals for a Revolution” marks a promising feature debut for Iranian actress-turned-helmer Pegah Ahangarani. Her compelling personal perspective on 40-plus years of post-Revolutionary Iran provides a chronicle of great hopes and even greater disappointments. In it, she plays with the Iranian concept of yād, which encompasses both memory and how the past returns to mark the present. A quality choice for festivals and broadcasters, it is especially notable for the abundant visual and aural archives she accesses, the poetic, allusive editing and her beautifully modulated narration.

Related Stories

Marisa Tomei, Kelly Macdonald and David Harewood Set for Second Season of HBO, Sky Legal Drama 'War'

Jodie Comer to Star in HBO Limited Series 'The Chain' From Damon Lindelof

Since the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979, every protest movement has been met with bloodshed. Given the authoritarian nature of the government and its control of the media, the full, brutal extent of these crackdowns are never seen by those inside the country, much less by foreigners. The mere fact of bearing witness makes “Rehearsals” an important piece of work. But Ahangarani’s skill as a story teller, honed over a three-decade acting career including more than 40 features, and through directing a number of documentary shorts, is clear to see.

“Rehearsals” is structured into five chapters that also serve as a memoir of sorts, encompassing the director’s nomadic childhood as the daughter of filmmakers Jamshid Ahangarani and Manijeh Hekmat (“Women’s Prison”) and the dawning of her political consciousness. At the end of each chapter, on-screen text provides statistics supporting the theme of the chapter.

The first section, titled “For my Father,” traces the arc of Ahangarani’s father, who went from being an enthusiastic supporter of the 1979 Revolution and Khomeini to a proud frontline soldier in the Iran-Iraq war to a man embittered by his battlefield experience and the execution of his actor best friend Davood Noori for alleged anti-revolutionary acts. She shows how this change manifested visually: In photos of the family’s Nowrooz holiday table, Khomeini’s picture is eventually replaced by Noori’s.

It is also mirrored in Ahangarani’s narration, which starts as a little girl’s naive belief in the rightness of the war and the omnipotence of her warrior father to her discovery of his secret letter revealing that he felt that half of his comrades were killed on the frontline and the other half executed by firing squad. The text card at the close of the episode notes that between 1980 and 1988, more than 200,000 Iranians were killed during the war, while over 15,000 Iranian political prisoners were executed and buried in mass graves.

In the second chapter, dedicated “To my dearest teacher,” Ahangarani looks back with wry self-awareness to reveal a traumatic incident that shattered her childhood innocence. Although growing up on her mother’s sets and progressing from work as an extra to success in speaking parts, she still craved a cozy family life with a mother that baked treats. She remembers playing the part of a smart, good girl at school and winning the attention of her best friend’s mother and also her beloved literature teacher.

But when she shares party photos taken at the teacher’s home with her school friends, trouble brews. In what is the first of many interrogations haunting Ahangarani’s life, the principal fools her by saying that she might as well confess, since the teacher has already told all. The result, as she terms it: “Cowardly, blabbing Pegah.” The teacher winds up dismissed and Ahangarani decides to leave school to become a professional actress. Her iconic turn as the rebel in the controversial “The Girl With Sneakers,” which wins her critical plaudits and widespread fame, seems to draw on some of her lived experience.

The third section centers on her youngest uncle, Rashid (1978–1999), a student journalist supporter of President Khatami, who lived and died during a brief period of hope for reform. Sadly, that period ended with the closure of newspapers, the violent put-down of protests and the arrest of more than a thousand along with many deaths.

Ahangarani’s experience as a campaigner for Mir Hossein Mousavi, the opposition leader in 2009, provides the fodder for the fourth chapter. Although not directly stated in the film, her activism in the Green Movement resulted in brief periods of arrest in 2009 and 2011, following which she left the country and is now living in the U.K. 

The fifth section, “For Lily,” is dedicated to her daughter. It contemplates the massacres of early 2026, in which human rights groups estimate a death toll in the tens of thousands, and concludes with the present situation, in which the Iranian people are trapped between internal repression and a forced war.

There is no on-screen camera credit. Rather, Ahangarani and editor Arash Najafi Ashtiani make intelligent use of personal material from family and friends, video shot on cell phones shot by the director and anonymous donors, news footage and photographs and even in one memorable case, an animated cartoon.