* Indie documentary filmed in run-up to 2009 election
* Film combines sport with culture shock
By Jordan Riefe
LOS ANGELES, June 24 (Reuters) – At first glance, “The Iran
Job” is just another David and Goliath sports story.
But boiling beneath the surface of the new indie documentary
that follows American basketball player Kevin Sheppard playing
in Iran’s league, is the socio-political turmoil seen in the
country’s uprising after the 2009 election.
“I wanted to make a film that gives an audience an
opportunity to understand the culture better and also the
political issues, the religious issues, the social issues,” said
the film’s German-born director Till Schauder. “Sports is a
perfect medium to do that cause you open people up.”
The film was among 30 to premiere at the Los Angeles Film
Festival, which ends on Sunday, and was screened before a varied
crowd of sports fans, reality TV stars, Iranian scholars and
other influential members of the city’s large Iranian-American
community.
Schauder spent a year filming the point guard in 2008 after
he joined the roster of A. S. Shiraz, an expansion team in the
Iranian Basketball Super League founded ten years earlier.
Sheppard’s assignment was simple: take the team to the
playoffs. After a dismal start and a televised trash can kicking
incident that put Sheppard’s job in jeopardy and led to a talk
with the coach and some adjustments, Shiraz took off on a
winning streak.
Along the way, the film shows Sheppard gaining some cultural
perspectives when he strikes up an unlikely friendship with
three young women, Elaheh, Hilda and Laleh, who would meet
Sheppard in his apartment where they could safely criticize the
government and the treatment of women.
“What’s going on in Iran is bad enough, but for women it’s
even worse,” Sheppard told Reuters about what he learned from
the women. “The lack of freedom they have, (they have to) keep
wearing the scarf, being half of a man in terms of voting.”
Sheppard connected their struggle with Neda Agha-Soltan –
the 26-year-old travel agent whose shooting death during the
protests was captured on video and viewed by millions on the
Internet – and with the civil rights movement in the U.S. during
the 1960s.
“I realized that I’ve never been through what
African-Americans went through with Dr. King, but I can only
imagine it had to be something similar to this,” said the Saint
Croix-born 32-year-old who played in countries including
Venezuela and Argentina before Iran.
But while the women struggled with their place in society
and tensions were high between Washington and Tehran, Sheppard
and Schauder said they personally witnessed little anti-American
sentiment from ordinary Iranians.
Schauder, who holds dual U.S.-German citizenship and is
married to Iranian-American co-producer Sara Nodjoumi, moved
freely in and out of Iran while making the movie.
But on his last trip, days before Shiraz’s big playoff game
in 2009, the filmmaker said he was detained overnight, without
explanation, on arrival at Tehran’s international airport and
sent back to New York the following day.
Now Shauder lives in Brooklyn, New York, and hopes to
release “The Iran Job” in U.S. movie theaters later this year.
As for Sheppard, he has since retired and returned home to
the U.S. Virgin Islands, he said his experience in Iran is never
far from his mind. Lately, he said he has even noticed some
similarities between Tehran and Washington.
“You can see it’s just a group of people out there with a
lot of money who’re just trying to shape and shift peoples’
minds,” he said.
(Editing by Christine Kearney and Jill Serjeant)
