Officially, the “information revolution” has not come to Iran. With only state-sanctioned Islamic programming permitted, many Iranians gravitate toward “forbidden” foreign media, whether from Hollywood or Bollywood, because it provides a window to the rest of the world. Acclaimed Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof reveals the government’s losing battle for control over the flow of information as he takes us through the labyrinth of Iran’s media underground: secret studios dub American films into Farsi; illegal satellites are installed in the dead of night; a band plays their beloved rock music within the depths of a hidden room. At the heart of this struggle beats the desire of the people for self-determination and open access to information. Head Wind is buoyed by the potency of a population’s incredible thirst for information and the lack of flow with which to quench it.
Mohammad Rasoulof was born in 1972 in Shiraz, Iran. He completed his studies in Sociology and began his work as a filmmaker with a number of short films. His first feature-length film was a docudrama called “Gogooman” (2002), which was screened at a number of festivals, including Locarno, and Montreal. Rasoulof’s second feature-length movie entitled “Iron Island” (2005) was selected for director’s Forthnight section in Cannes Film Festival, and was shown at other festivals such as Telluride, Karlovy Vary, and the Toronto Int’l Film Festivals, and received a number of awards. “Head Wind” is a documentary about the restrictions currently imposed in Iran on using satellites and internet.