By Kayhan Life Staff
Aila Navidi — a French-Iranian playwright and director who in 2024 won a Molière, France’s most prestigious stage award — made a poignant speech about Iran at this year’s Molières ceremony.
Navidi in 2024 won the award for Best Show in a Private Theater for her play « 4211 km ».
Les Molières are the equivalent of the US Tony Awards and the British Olivier Awards, and are awarded for excellence in French theater.
Before presenting an award at this year’s ceremony on May 4 at the Théâtre Marigny in Paris, she said she was honored to celebrate those who write, tell stories, and nourish our souls.
“It is sometimes our responsibility as artists to give voice to those who have none,” she said. “I would therefore like to share with you the words of an Iranian woman, which she managed to convey to us despite the internet blackout imposed by the Islamic Republic:
‘April 1, 2026. The war begins. It’ll be okay, Azizam [my dear]. They’re going to rid us of our tormentors. After everything they’ve done to us, this has to stop. Six days later, when the bombs are falling and we have light, it’s okay, but when we’re plunged into darkness, I feel like I’m already in my coffin, my daughter in my arms.’
Then Navidi read out the woman’s last message: ‘Things have calmed down, but we’re being held hostage. If we don’t die under the bombs, the Islamic Republic will kill us.’
Navidi said: “This is one voice among the millions trapped between the bombs meant to free them and a terrorist regime that continues to oppress and execute its people … Every morning, Iranians wake up to news of more hangings. More than 600 since the start of the year. Yesterday, they were Nasser Bakerzadeh and Mehrab Abdollahzadeh, 26 and 28 years old.”
“I wonder: What are we doing, we, the country of human rights,” asked Navidi. “Despite the repression, the torture, the hanging, the bombs, grieving mothers dance while weeping, political prisoners recite poems to escape. Hope lies in them, in their courage, in their resilience.”
“Like you, I believe in the power of words and their ability to awaken us, to challenge us, to shake us up, to give us the strength to hope, to resist,” concluded Navidi. “We still have freedom. I believe it calls on us to resist the new fascism; more broadly, it calls on us to always stand alongside the people. This war will end one day. The regime will fall one day. Our stories, our poetry, our art, our music and our humanity will survive. Woman, Life, Freedom.”
Navidi’s award-winning play, “4211 km” has made a triumphant return to the stage at Studio Marigny in Paris since February, after drawing more than 100,000 spectators in 2024. It is scheduled to run at the Studio Marigny until June 28.
Author, director and actress Navidi was born in France to Iranian political refugees. Her journalist father and her philosophy teacher mother had fled Iran after the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Aila was born in Paris four years later, and grew up in a studio apartment in the 13th arrondissement, speaking Farsi in a home in which exile was viewed as bound to be temporary.
After graduating from business school, Navidi worked as a consultant in television and film before leaving the industry to set up a performing arts association, La Compagnie du Nouveau Jour, in January 2023.
“4211 Km” is her story – the fragmented story of a child born in exile who longs to return to her homeland, one she has never seen. The title of the play is the distance between Paris and Tehran. It is the distance covered by the characters playing the role of Aila’s own parents: an Iranian couple seeking refuge in France following the 1979 Revolution.
The couple were left-wing activists who had taken part in the Revolution against the Shah in the 1970s and who, when Iran became an Islamic Republic, joined the fight against repression by the Khomeini regime, and were forced to flee Iran to become political refugees in France.
In the play, the story of their life in exile, their fight for freedom, their love of the homeland and their hope of return is told by their daughter Yalda, born in Paris in 1981. Yalda has just become a mother and wants her child to bear her own last name and that of her French husband.
Navidi told France 24 in June 2024 that she needed to leave a trace of her parents’ story and their struggle. “It is pretty hard to see your parents grow old and fight for freedom for 40 years,” she added. “I wanted to tell their story so they wouldn’t be forgotten.”
