This text is part of an editorial project.
It is not a personal statement or legal disclosure.
Editor’s Note
The First Lie I Told to Keep Working
I never worked for my résumé.
That lie would have been easier.
Most of the time, my name was removed quickly.
Silence didn’t protect me.
Compliance didn’t last long enough to matter.
I didn’t use ambiguity because it was fashionable.
I used it because direct speech didn’t survive.
Even then, it was often too much.
Every film I made under censorship spoke in fragments, signs, and detours.
Not to outsmart authority
but because anything clearer was simply erased.
I paid bribes early on.
Not many times.
Enough to understand that once is already too many.
I also made a few films meant to satisfy the system.
They were not praise.
They were negotiations.
Double-sided constructions built to pass inspection while carrying another meaning underneath.
I knew exactly what I was doing.
That knowledge didn’t make it clean.
It made it conscious.
The lie was not that I resisted.
The lie was believing resistance could stay untouched.
This is not an apology.
It is not bravery either.
It is a record of how survival teaches you to blur your own limits
quietly, professionally, one decision at a time.
Javanmard Cinema — Editorial Notes
December 20th 2025
This section documents decisions, compromises, and survival strategies behind filmmaking under pressure.
These texts are not statements. They are records.
JP Independent Journal 