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Since Iran's revolution in 1979, the government has systematically targeted students and deprived them of basic human rights. This trailer is a preview of a documentary that tells stories of students who have suffered repression, imprisonment, torture and worse.
» View full film (21 minutes)

The young men and women below come from both wealth and poverty, from urban and rural areas. Whether high school teenagers or masters candidates, atheists or religious devotees, human rights advocates or political activists, they seek a forum for discussing their ideas; a safe space to protest and air their grievances. All too often they are silenced.

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The students shown in the slideshow are selected based on the availability of photographs and details about their cases, regardless of their political affiliation. Their names are drawn from a list of more than 1,600 executed high school and university students in the Omid Memorial and from the Abdorrahman Boroumand Foundation’s list of more than 11,000 students punished or intimidated by the Islamic Republic’s judiciary, security and paramilitary forces, university disciplinary committees, and ideological and political bureaus.

Interrupted Lives: Portraits of Student Repression in Iran

Throughout the more than thirty-year history of the Islamic Republic of Iran, there have been thousands of cases of human rights abuse. Students have been among those arbitrarily arrested, imprisoned, tortured, and executed. Whether treated as political pawns, punished for expressing their opinions, or violated for refusing to recant their beliefs, these students were kept from pursuing the development and free exchange of ideas, the hallmarks of education. Their lives were cut short or irrevocably altered.

“Interrupted Lives” is a travelling exhibit that tells the story of Iranian students who have been punished for expressing their beliefs. Thousands have been victims of politically motivated arrests or executions during the past three decades. Click for details.