After 9/11, Maryam Keshavarz realised she wanted to change the way Muslims were portrayed in the US media. She explains why she drew on her childhood for her award-winning new movie
When Maryam Keshavarz was a young girl growing up in New York City in the 1980s, she would spend her summer holidays travelling to Iran, from where her parents had migrated. As well as her luggage, she would fly with small plastic bags taped to her body containing objects she would smuggle into and out of Iran.
The most common thing Keshavarz was asked to bring from the US was cassette tapes featuring American pop. “I would stick them in my underwear,” she says over video call from Los Angeles, “because it was an Islamic country. They were never going to check girls’ bodies.”
