“My hope is that one day, freedom and joy, returns to my home”
This is the voice of Googoosh, Iran’s original pop goddess, whose reign in the pre-revolution 1970s sealed her place in the country’s musical and cultural DNA. Googoosh- Made of Fire is a poetic, politically charged documentary which feels like a roar, a long-held breath finally released after decades of enforced silence. She enters in the opening scenes wearing a Ralph Lauren two-piece cargo/army style outfit. Clearly high-end designer, but with a powerful visual that the fight for freedom and democracy is far from over.
To understand the impact of this film, one must first understand the mythology of Googoosh. Before the 1979 Iranian Revolution, she was the country’s brightest star: a singer, actress, and fashion icon whose every public appearance sparked hysteria. She was Iran’s answer to Barbara Streisand, Cher, and Edith Piaf, all rolled into one impeccably coiffed figure. But after the revolution, her voice was banned, and she was silenced for more than two decades. She remained in Iran, cloaked in anonymity, while her music echoed only through bootlegged cassettes and diaspora nostalgia. She shares a story of grocery shopping and walking from the store, hoping to wave down a lift. One car slowed down and they were playing her music, but then they sped off, youngsters clowning around, not realising it was the icon who they were listening to.
“Almost overnight, I became average” she said.
Screening in the Persian Film Festival 2025
World Premiere at Sheffield DocFest 2024
Selected for Doc NYC 2024, Vancouver International Film Festival 2024, Écrans du Monde 2025, CPH:Dox 2025, Jeonju Film Festival 2025 amongst others
Nominated – Best Documentary – Miami Film Festival 2025
Director Niloufar Taghizadeh
Cinematographers James Rodney Stolz, Steffen Bohnert
Editor Catharina Kleber
Produced By Niloufar Taghizadeh
Co-production Windcatcher-Productions with ZDF/ARTE
Starring Googoosh, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Aref Arefkia, Raha Etemadi, Leila Forouhar, Babak Saeedi as themselves
The documentary gives Googoosh back to Iranians on her own terms. Through a patchwork of interviews, rare behind-the-scenes footage, concert clips, and moments of staggering intimacy, Googoosh – Made of Fire pieces together the fragments of a life lived both under the spotlight and in the shadows. The most arresting parts of the film are not the glittering concert moments (though they dazzle), nor the feverish fan montages, but the silences. The camera stills for longer than feels comfortable on Googoosh’s face as she reflects on exile and on a crowd in Tehran mouthing lyrics they’re not legally allowed to hear.
Googoosh herself is a master of minimalism. Her words are few but fiercely weighted. “I was not just a singer,” she says at one point. “I was a dream.” And in those eight words, we hear everything: the betrayal, the longing, the power of performance to transcend political boundaries.
The documentary never leans on sentimentality. Instead, the visuals do the talking. Footage of a 2000 comeback concert in Toronto—her first performance in over 21 years—offers no voiceover, no swelling soundtrack. Just raw sound, and the shaking hands of audience members overwhelmed by her presence. In telling the story of one woman’s silencing, it lays bare the systematic repression of female voices in Iran. Googoosh is proud, angry, nuanced. It interrogates without exploiting. There is a particularly powerful moment where Googoosh—flanked by old friends and collaborators—speaks of her years in silence not with bitterness, but with a kind of melancholy. “I waited,” she says simply. “I waited to be heard again.” It’s not just a personal statement. It’s a rallying cry for every artist, every woman, every dissident forced into the margins.
The cinematography is painterly, with a restrained, almost tactile beauty. Colour is used sparingly but symbolically: bursts of saffron and turquoise break through the grey tones like Googoosh’s voice breaking through a regime’s restrictions. The soundtrack, too, is masterful—interweaving Googoosh’s classic hits with ambient city soundscapes. It’s a film that’s as much about sound as it is about silence, and the film balances the two with the deftness of a conductor.
For Iranians living abroad, this film will strike a deep and painful chord. There is a section where the camera pans across Iranian homes in Los Angeles, Stockholm, Sydney- each one lit by the same grainy video of a Googoosh concert – each one holding the same tearful elders mouthing her lyrics. In this way, Googoosh becomes not just a singer, but a thread tying a dispersed people back to a stolen homeland. The documentary doesn’t shy away from complexity either. It touches on the criticisms Googoosh has faced over the years—from her decision to remain in Iran post-revolution, to her eventual emigration. But even here, the director allows Googoosh to answer in her own time. “I never left,” she says. “Even when I did.”
Googoosh is a reminder that art can survive censorship, that identity can withstand erasure, and that true icons never truly fade. It is a cinematic shrine to one of the Middle East’s most enduring artistic forces. Googoosh emerges as a symbol for resilience, for a people who still hum her tunes under their breath, waiting for the day they can sing them freely again.
The 11th Persian Film Festival will be held from 24th of April to 11th of May 2025. The program will include an official competition in feature, and short film categories where the Festival Jury will present the Golden Gazelle Award to the best film in each section. The festival will open in Sydney and will tour to Melbourne (1-4 May) and Armidale (9-11 May).
