Silence Between Two Thoughts is a dear project for me. The original idea was loosely based on Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. A script I was working on since 1996. An Afghani worker in Iran loses everything he has worked hard to earn in a cold winter day. Facing continuous hardship and discrimination in Iran, he decides to return to his war torn homeland, find Osama Bin Ladin and kill him so his country will be free of war. A journey that drags him deep into the heart of darkness in Afghanistan.
After the September 11, 2011 events, I decided to abandon that project. A difficult decision for me. Eventually I took the last act of that story and wrote Silence Between Two Thoughts. This story was for me, a study of the circumstances surrounded religious dogmatism, blind faith and the torment of doubt and self alienation by someone completely brain washed by religious despots.
In June 2003 I was arrested by plain-clothed security officials in Tehran and all of the original material of Silence Between Two Thoughts was confiscated. I was subsequently released to serve as a member of the jury at the Moscow International Film Festival. A digital reconstruction of the film was created from an Avid editing hard disk that I had sent to Italy prior to confiscation of my material. The film opened at the Venice International Film Festival in 2003. I never returned to Iran since.
