Doc Talk Podcast: Director Pegah Ahangarani On Her Oscar-Contending ‘Rehearsals For A Revolution’ And Trump’s Fateful Attack On Iran

Filmmaker Pegah Ahangarani’s journey to make the award-winning documentary Rehearsals for a Revolution began with the discovery of a photograph.

She was visiting her grandmother’s house in Iran when she came upon an image. In the photo, “I noticed a man who was standing next to my father, but his face had been scratched out. I asked my grandmother, ‘Who is this person? Why his face has been scratched out?’” Ahangarani recalls. “She said, ‘He was your father’s best friend. And he was executed after the Revolution because he was a political prisoner.’”

That disturbing story speaks to an experience common in the director’s family and in Iran as a whole – hopes raised by revolutionary fervor that end in terrible repression.

Rehearsals for a Revolution premiered in Cannes where it won the l’Oeil d’or prize for the festival’s top documentary. It has also claimed best documentary wins at the Woodstock Film Festival in New York and the Montclair Film Festival in New Jersey, among other honors. It recently made the IDA Documentary Awards shortlist of the year’s best nonfiction features and was named to the Winners Circle at DOC NYC. It has since become the UK’s submission into the 2027 International Feature Film Oscar race.

Ahangarani joins the latest edition of Deadline’s Doc Talk podcast to discuss her work on the deeply personal film that explores what her father, who initially supported the Islamic Revolution of 1979; her uncle, a beloved teacher; and others close to her went through as the theocratic regime asserted total control over its people. She says she sees her mission as making sure the faces scratched out of Iran’s history are not forgotten.

The director also explores how the documentary reached its final form after three years of intense editing (a surprise guest drops by to reveal why Ahangarani often called him in middle of the night to scrap versions of the edit and start all over again). Ahangarani is an opponent of Iran’s Islamist government, but does that make her a supporter of President Trump’s decision to join Israel in attacking Iran? Hardly. She shares why she considers that military maneuver counterproductive and “stupid.”

That’s on the new episode of Doc Talk hosted by Oscar winner John Ridley (12 Years a Slave, Shirley) and Matt Carey, Deadline’s senior documentary editor. The pod is a production of Deadline and Ridley’s Nō Studios.

Listen to the episode above or on major podcast platforms including Spotify, iHeart and Apple.