Pantea Modiri recounts how Iran changed overnight after the revolution
Drawing on personal experience and activist theory, Modiri explains how dictators rule
Modiri sees storytelling as an act of defiance, a way to reclaim freedom
In a podcast conversation with host Maayan Hoffman, Pantea Modiri spoke candidly about her childhood in Iran. Modiri is an Iran-born international journalist and filmmaker whose work explores politics, culture, identity, and human connection. She reflected on the trauma of growing up under authoritarian Islamic rule, explaining how fear shapes societies—and how it also fuels resistance.
Reflecting on the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Modiri described how abruptly her world changed. The revolution overthrew Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s monarchy and replaced the Imperial State of Iran with the Islamic Republic under Islamist cleric Ruhollah Khomeini.
“I was little when Iran changed overnight. Even as a child, I could see the whole beauty vanish,” she said. Modiri recalled that television, once filled with colour, romance and images of elegance, transformed almost instantly.
“The TV that was colourful, with elegant women, beautiful romantic nature and romantic scenes, suddenly turned into an angry turbaned man preaching fear, sitting literally at a graveyard,” she said.
The personal cost of the political shift became clear when the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) targeted her family. “When the IRGC military raided our house and arrested my family, I realised that silence is deadly,” Modiri said.
Her family fled Iran in 1986 after her parents concluded they could no longer live under the regime (Islamic Republic of Iran). Even before leaving, Modiri learned how dangerous expression could be. She recalled writing a poem while in primary school, an act that nearly brought severe consequences. She said the teacher came to their house and warned that the poem could bring the family into serious trouble.
“If anyone else had seen that poem, you learn that freedom is a mindset, that you have to build courage while dictators are trying to inject fear,” she said.
Modiri connected her experiences to broader patterns of authoritarian control, referencing Serbian activist Srdja Popović. She said that in a book Popović wrote about dictators, he argued that they do not seek to kill everyone, but to rule through fear.
“They want everyone to be afraid of them,” she said. According to Modiri, fear, not violence alone is the primary tool of repression. “It is the fear that they inject into society,” she said, adding that resistance often begins with learning how to live with that fear rather than surrendering to it. “Somehow, you learn how to dance with that fear.”
For Modiri, storytelling is not just an act of remembrance, but a form of defiance, a way to reclaim agency, preserve dignity, and inspire courage across borders. A former White House correspondent and senior producer based in London, she now works across documentary filmmaking, dialogue initiatives, and cross-cultural media projects. Her work focuses on stories that uncover the shared humanity behind political and social divides.
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