DOCHOUSE PRESENTS: Going Up the Stairs

GOING UP THE STAIRS
Rokhsareh Ghaem Maghami
(Iran - 2011 – 52 mins)

Winner Sheffield Doc/Fest Award for Best Female Director

'The film is truly a masterpiece' Vox Magazine

Married at nine, on her wedding night Akram was so threatened with violence that she fainted. Fear of displeasing her husband drove her from school before she learned to read. Now a grandmother, and still living with her husband Heidar in Tehran, her knees hurt when she goes up the stairs. But upstairs is where she paints.

She has already had a successful local exhibition, despite the fact that her husband berates her for using too much paint. Now Akram has been invited to Paris, but will he give her permission to go abroad for the first time?

‘Going Up The Stairs’ is a charming, beautifully filmed portrait of the flourishing of an unlikely artist in the least hospitable of environments, and a rare glimpse inside a very traditional Iranian marriage.

www.dochouse.org (http://www.dochouse.org/film-screening/Going-Up-the-Stairs/11)