How Samira Made The Blackboard

The latest edition of the Venice Film Festival was a family affair for the Makhmalbafs. Apart from Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s Testing Democracy (part of Tales of an Island) and The Day I Became a Woman by his wife Marziye Meshkini, both Samira Makhmalbaf’s Blackboards and the documentary How Samira Made Blackboards by her even younger brother Maysam were shown.This documentary is not only about the making of Blackboards, but also about Samira’s first feature The Apple. But it is primarily a report about Samira Makhmalbaf blossoming as a film-maker. The film shows why she was fascinated by film-making and how she then went on to develop as a director. In addition, How Samira Made Blackboards talks about the contradiction between the opposition that Samira experienced in her own country and the great successes of her films in the Western world. Blackboards won the jury prize at Cannes and Samira was given the Federico Fellini medal by Unesco.