TEHRAN – Iranian director Parviz Sheikhtadi, who is famous for his anti-Zionist movie “Saturday Hunter”, is making a TV series on Tahereh Dabbagh, a commando and political prisoner who is known as the grandmother of the Islamic Revolution.

He is currently shooting scenes of the series “Bye, Mother” on location in Zanjan, the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting announced on Thursday.

Nasrin Babai stars as Dabbagh who operated under the alias Marzieh Hadidchi.

Due to her guerrilla activities and long imprisonment during the Pahlavi period, Dabbagh was called “the grandmother of the Islamic Revolution”.

She also was the bodyguard of the family of Imam Khomeini, the founder of Islamic Republic, in exile in Paris.

She was one of the political prisoners who was tortured with the Apollo set, which was made by the SAVAK intelligence services to extract confessions. She was also a commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) during the 1980s.

Dabbagh was also a member of the Iranian delegation assigned the task of delivering Imam Khomeini’s historic message to Mikhail Gorbachev, president of the Soviet Union, in 1989. She served as an MP for several rounds in the Majlis and finally died in 2016.

Sheikhtadi made his latest movie “Emperor of Hell” in 2018. The film sheds light on the role of an Arab mufti in the rise of the extremism of ISIS.

The film won the Golden Barberry Award for the worst film participating in the 36th Fajr Film Festival. The award is given by a number of critics and journalists working for the Golden Barberry Foundation.  

“Emperor of Hell” is the second instalment of his trilogy, the first part of which “Saturday’s Hunter” was produced about Zionism in 2009.

“Saturday’s Hunter” narrates the story of a Jewish widow who marries a Christian man. The grandfather of her son asks her to bring his grandson to spend a short time with him after which the boy can decide whether to stay with his mother or his grandfather.

Sheikhtadi also made the TV series “Lady Commander” for IRIB in 2017.

The series was about Sardar Bibi Maryam Bakhtiari, a Lorish Iranian revolutionary and activist of the Constitutional Revolution.

As a military commander, Bibi Maryam played a distinguished role when Bakhtiari tribal forces, with the help of modern arms from the German Empire, successfully captured Tehran in 1909 as part of the revolutionary campaign to force the central government to establish democratic reforms.

Photo: Political activist Tahereh Dabbagh in an undated photo.

MMS/YAW