Scotland helps recover the part me I lost in an Iranian torture cell

ON THE wall of exiled Iranian filmmaker Javad Daraei's bedroom is a picture of a Highland landscape as a reminder when he wakes up that he is safe in Scotland.

- BY ANNIE BROWN

In his mind, the acclaimed director too easily drifts back to the tiny windowless cell where he was imprisoned and tortured daily by Iran's Revolutionary Guard.

He said: "Sometimes I feel mentally frozen in that place though physically I am in Scotland.

"But being here is helping me recover the part of me that I lost in that terrible place."

Javad's films are banned in his home-land but have won 57 awards and 52 nominations in the UK, the US, Europe and Asia.

Two are to have their Scots premiere in Edinburgh.

Javad, 33, is also making his first feature in English in Scotland about the life of a sex worker in Glasgow.

As he talks in his small flat in the city's east end, Javad steadies the nerves that always come when he recalls the terror he faced in Iran.

Javad risked his life, shooting in secret his films which highlight the persecution of women, the LGTBQ community and the disabled under the tyrannical rule of the Islamic Republic.