TEHRAN AND CAIRO — His girlfriend is in jail for espionage and acclaimed Kurdish Iranian film director Bahman Ghobadi is thinking about packing up his scripts and editing equipment and heading to Europe. He is tired, he says, of censors and Islamic politics intruding upon his life and art.
But Ghobadi, director of spare, poetic films such as "A Time for Drunken Horses," doesn't want to go anywhere until his girlfriend, Roxana Saberi, is freed on appeal. The 31-year-old Iranian American journalist was convicted of spying for the U.S. and sentenced to eight years in prison.
On Wednesday, Ghobadi sat in his Tehran office, gray flecks in his hair, but a face still young, waiting for news.
"I am absolutely sure she will be freed in less than a month," he said. "If not, I cannot even imagine it."
The real-life saga since Saberi's sentencing Saturday seems grist for a thriller: A journalist accused of crimes against the state emerges as the protagonist caught between two enemy nations -- the U.S. and Iran -- locked in a struggle haunted by the specter of nuclear arms. But for Ghobadi such a script may lack the grit and lyrical, redemptive realism he conjured in "Turtles Can Fly," the story of children in the mountains of Kurdistan who collect unexploded bombs and wait for satellite TV at the brink of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
There have been indications in recent days that Saberi's sentence may be commuted or rescinded. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the chief judge of the country's judiciary have stressed that the journalist, who worked for the BBC and National Public Radio, should receive a quick and fair appeal. Iran, where hard-liners and moderates are battling ahead of June elections, may not want the case to jeopardize improving relations with the Obama administration, which contends that Saberi is innocent.
Ghobadi worries, makes plans, writes letters and talks about the restrictive lives artists and journalists face in his country. He spoke about his depression over the censors' objections to his films, including "Half Moon," which was banned in Iran, and his latest, "Nobody Knows the Persian Cat," which is scheduled to be shown in May at the Cannes International Film Festival.
He is also a man fighting guilt: He asked Saberi to stay in Iran while he worked on "Nobody Knows the Persian Cat," despite her desire to leave for the United States. She ended up as a co-writer on the script.
