Jina Khayyer: Im Herzen der Katze

In the organizer's words:

It's night in the south of France. Jina sits at her desk, phone in hand. Her Instagram feed updates every second. She reads: "Jina Mahsa Amini was beaten into a coma by the morality police in Tehran." The next moment she realizes: The young woman with the same name as her is dead. The images follow in the feed: the protest march of thousands of people on the streets, girls and women wearing their hair uncovered, including Jina's sister Roya and her niece Nika.
What begins as an attempt to understand the present becomes a journey into the past. For the events awaken memories in Jina of her own stays in Iran: of the hospitality of the people, the richly laid table of the aunts, the encounters in the shared cab, the road trip to Zarathustra's fire temple in Yazd - and of a secret love. But also the protests during the Green Movement in 2009, in which Jina took part and which became a life-changing experience.

In the Heart of the Cat is a family and love story that questions ideas of nationality and belonging, of womanhood and freedom. With poetic intensity, Jina Khayyer tells of courage, solidarity and responsibility and of the echoes of a homeland that cannot be shaken off.