AKADEMIE FORUM: STEFFI NIEDERZOLL & SHOLE PAKRAVAN

The documentary film Seven Winters in Tehran tells the story of Reyhaneh Jabbari, who was arrested and charged with murder in 2007. While ample evidence indicated that the 19-year-old woman had acted in self-defense against a man who attacked and attempted to rape her, the court still sentenced her to death. Seven Winters in Tehran draws on personal and secretly recorded videos provided by Reyhaneh’s family, as well as on their testimonies, on letters written from prison, and on other archives, to retrace the trial, detention, and fate of this woman who became a symbol of resistance. Her fight for dignity, truth, and justice continues to echo and inspire the struggle of many others today.

Steffi Niederzoll studied audiovisual media arts at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne and at the Escuela Internacional de Cine y Televisión in Cuba. Her short films have been screened at numerous national and international film festivals, including the Berlin Film Festival. She has taught master classes in film directing and has held a scholarship from the Tarabya Cultural Academy in Türkiye. Her interdisciplinary artistic work with art collectives has been presented at the Brecht Festival in Augsburg, the Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Roskilde and Vejle, Denmark, among others. Together with Shole Pakravan, she wrote the book How to Become a Butterfly about Reyhaneh Jabbari (2023). Seven Winters in Tehran is her first feature-length documentary.

Shole Pakravan was born in Kermanshah, Iran, and graduated from the University of Arts in Tehran with a degree in puppetry. She married Fereydoon Jabbari and had the first of her three daughters, Reyhaneh, in 1987. She performed on Iran’s stages for nearly three decades and managed a collective cultural center. Following the arrest and sentencing of her daughter, she began to advocate against her execution, sparking a worldwide outcry in 2014. Through Reyhaneh

Presented in English
Featuring a musical performance by Yume Zamponi (violin), student at the Barenboim-Said Akademie