activity

We need to talk about... Iran

Film program in collaboration with Leiden Shorts

Sunday 31 May from 14:00 until 16:00 uur

During the Leiden Shorts film festival, you can also watch films at Museum De Lakenhal. This program gathers films that turn everyday recording into a form of resistance. Through VHS fragments, letters, and personal diaries, they assemble counter-archives that hold onto what conflict threatens to erase. Across Iran and beyond, small, daily gestures such as filming from a window, waiting, and observing take on new weight on resistance.

In a special collaboration with Museum De Lakenhal, the film program on Sunday 31 May will be followed by a panel discussion with Iranian filmmaker Siavash Naghshbandi and the Iranian visual artist Sam Samiee. The session will be moderated by Stavros Markoulakis, artistic director of Leiden Shorts.

This programme is part of this year’s focus programme which opens up space to engage with the notion of “freedom” as both a lived condition and a collective question: how it is limited, negotiated, expressed, and reimagined?

filmprogram with Q&A

  • Archive of Collateral Lives - Siavash Naghshbandi (Iran / 2026 / 17')
  • Memories of a Window - Mehraneh Salimian & Amin Pakparvar (Iran, US, Germany / 2026 / 19')

  • Fruits of Despair - Nima Nassaj (Iran / 2026 / 29')

  • Q&A with filmmaker Siavash Naghshbandi and visual artist Sam Samiee, moderated by Stavros Markoulakis (artistic director of Leiden Shorts)

Practical information

  • Date: Sunday 31 May
  • Time: 14.00 until 16.00
  • Location: Auditorium at Museum De Lakenhal
  • Price: regular: €13 / Cineville: €0