Life in Iran 'Before the Revolution'

Israeli filmmaker Dan Shadur has brought out a new documentary thriller that describes the last days of the Israeli community in Tehran, on the eve of the Islamic Revolution of 1979. CNN spoke to him about his motivations for making the film, his desire to investigate the relationship between the countries, and his realisation that the motivations for the revolution weren't as black and white as he had been led to believe.

"It used to be very intriguing to me, over the years, having these family photos from Iran, while growing up as an Israeli in the '80s and '90s, Iran, it's like this big demonic thing that is the most scary and the most horrible thing in the world, and there is this gap that was always intriguing for me. And then I started looking into it and I realised that this thing of Israelis living in Iran was a very big thing, much bigger than I thought, it was very intimate relationships covering commerce and intelligence and militaries, and it wasn't only us, it was a very large Israeli community living in Tehran."

"The first thing that was of interest to me was to put a spotlight on this story, to say that this big rift that exists today didn't exist for so long. The other thing that was very intriguing for me when I started researching this story was realising that these happy days of ours weren't so happy for many others, and this revolution that was always portrayed to me as this dark force coming and driving us away from our paradise was actually something deeply rooted with some very good causes for the Iranian people, no matter that what happened later wasn't what many of them hoped for."