For the theatrical release of The secret little girl, by the Iranian director Ali Asgari, a film sponsored by Amnesty International, and a symbolic period was chosen: the one in which, exactly on 16 September two years earlier, the young student Mahsa Amini had died in prison due to the beatings she suffered during her arrest for failure to comply with the law on compulsory veiling. The film was presented in competition at the Berlin Film Festival, made in 2022. The director subsequently directed Kafka in Tehran (2023) e Divine Comedy (2025).
The film tells the adventures of a young student from Tehran over the course of a single day: she is the mother of a two-month-old baby girl, born out of wedlock and not recognized by her father. The parents, who live far away, don’t know it and, when they announce a surprise visit, the girl – after having eliminated every trace of the newborn’s presence from the house – searches in every way for someone to entrust her to until their departure.
On his journey she clashes with the fear of other women, the obtuseness of men, the rigidity of the laws and even with an attempted violence by a hospital doctor. An uphill road, despite her determination and her maternal love, which sheds light on the contradictions of a country divided between modernity and obscurantism, where cinema represents one of the most incisive tools of civil denunciation.
