Juliette Binoche gathers her hair at the back of her head as if she were about to tie the strands into a braid. Instead, the French actress grabs the scissors and cuts off a good piece – “for freedom”.
The clip, which was circulated on social networks on Wednesday morning, shows 50 prominent women from France cutting individual strands of hair in solidarity with the protesting people in Iran.
The video uses plaques to refer to the 22-year-old Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini, who was arrested in the Iranian capital Tehran in mid-September, apparently because moral guards were bothered by strands of hair sticking out of Amini’s headscarf. The young woman died three days later.
Since then, thousands of people in Iran have taken to the streets to demonstrate against the repression in their country, and women cut their hair in protest. Numerous people have already died.
In addition to Binoche, the actresses Isabelle Adjani, Marion Cotillard, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Isabelle Huppert, among others, also took part in the video, as well as the singers Jane Birkin and Angèle. It is accompanied by the Persian version of the Italian partisan song “Bella Ciao”, which has become the anthem of the protests.
“We stand by your side,” Cotillard wrote on Instagram for the video addressed to the protesters in Iran. The video was initiated by French human rights lawyer Richard Sédillot.
In Germany, meanwhile, more than 600 cultural workers expressed their support for the demonstrators in an open letter on Tuesday: “We will accompany your fight,” it said.
