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Hitch, une histoire iranienne

Friday 2 October, 6.00 pm

Villa Saroli
Viale S. Franscini 9, Lugano 

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The Iranian people are suffering repression, inflation and bombardments of appalling scale. The current conflicts are further intensifying political violence and severe precarity. As part of the 6th biennale svizzera del territorio "Handle with Care", we present a screening of the film Hitch, une histoire iranienne, by and with Chowra Makaremi, an anthropologist and filmmaker of Iranian origin, winner of the 2026 Prix européen de l'Essai.

The daughter of a resistance fighter who disappeared in the prisons of Tehran, Chowra Makaremi traces the history of her family, shedding light on another Iranian history and questioning the present.

«Iran, 1988. Thousands of political prisoners, held since the aftermath of the 1979 revolution, are massacred. These last revolutionaries opposed to Khomeini are eliminated in the utmost secrecy. Among them, Fatemeh Zarei, my mother. As the Iranian state continues to deny its crimes and still strives today to erase all traces of them, the film sets out in search of the places, objects and gestures that will help unravel the silence, where only the intimate remains as testimony to a politics.» — Chowra Makaremi

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The following day, Saturday 3 October at 6.00 pm at the Consolato Generale d'Italia, Chowra Makaremi will be in conversation with Cyril Veillon in Counter-Archives — Discover the full programme of the 6th biennale svizzera del territorio.

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Who is Chowra Makaremi

Chowra Makaremi is a CNRS researcher and anthropologist in Paris. She has coordinated several research collectives on border control in Europe. On the Iranian revolution, she has also published Aziz's Notebook at the Hearth of the Iranian Revolution (Gallimard, 2011) and, with Hannah Darabi, Enghelab Street. A Revolution Through Books 1979-83 (Le Bal/Spector, 2019). She directed the film Hitch. An Iranian Story (Alter Ego, France, 78 min., 2019). She has published Woman! Life! Freedom! Echoes of a Revolutionary Uprising in Iran (La Découverte, France Culture/Arte prize for best essay 2023), translated into several languages, and Résistances affectives. Les politiques de l'attachement face aux politiques de la cruauté (La Découverte, 2025).

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