It’s easy to understand why the works of painter Nickzard “Nicky“ Nodjoumi didn’t find favor in his theocratic homeland: in his art, he undresses women in niqabs, lets blood flow at the feet of Ayatollah Khomeini, and reveals the interrogation techniques of SAVAK, the former Iranian secret service. In A REVOLUTION IN CANVAS, his director and researcher daughter Sara looks for her father Nicky’s paintings that disappeared from the walls of Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art in the early 1980s for political reasons and tells his life story while doing so.

This biography doesn’t degenerate into a hagiography due to the heartfelt honesty of the family members. When Sara asks the constantly painting Nicky if he missed his family during the Iranian Revolution, all she gets is a stoic “no.“ His head, according to the film, was constantly in the clouds of the revolution. His heart, which beat for Western modernity, was broken by the fact that it was the wrong revolution that took place in Iran in 1979. The monarchical-tyrannical Shah was replaced by a fanatical-tyrannical Ayatollah.

Half political thriller, half biography, A REVOLUTION ON CANVAS goes beyond the story of Nodjoumi’s work to the political situation of Iran in the present. When daughter Sara talks to contacts from her country, faces have to be censored, when scenes of the unrest from that time are shown, images of today's protests in Iran following the death of Mahsa Amini are not far away. It is palpable: the regime that came to power in 1979 still has an impact today. The political, private, and the art are inextricably linked for the Nodjoumi family.

Christopher Suss

Translation: Elinor Lewy