Metamorphosis, Iranian Style

Cartoonist Mana Neyestani was well aware of the risks artists face in Iran. But he could have never predicted or imagined that his personal nightmare would emerge from a simple story for children, that it all would begin with a cockroach that utters a single, seemingly innocuous word. What followed was a series of baffling and dangerous misunderstandings, protests, accusations, and later, arrests, and interrogations. In Metamorphosis, Iranian Style, Ala Mohseni looks at the collision of individual identity and politics and tells the very personal story of one artist’s experience of exile, censorship, and grief, and his fight to protect not only his creative freedom but also his sense of self.

"It all began with a cockroach..."