Short film highlights secret history of Mashhadi Jews

A girls’ day of play creates fear for a Mashhadi Jewish family in the short film Mashhad. (Photo credit: Reboot Studios.) 

Growing up in the holy Islamic city of Mashhad, Iran in the 1960s, Fred Hakimian faced discrimination regularly while on his way to school. 

“The kids would throw rocks and say ‘Jew, Jew, Jew,’” recalled the Chicago jeweler, now 70. Decades earlier, his grandparents—and the entire population of 10,000 Mashhadi Jews—faced even greater persecution. 

“The Muslims came in and said, ‘you become Muslim or we’re going to kill you.’ So they changed their religion,” Hakimian said. But the Mashhadi Jews held onto their traditions in secret. “They used to get together in somebody’s basement every Shabbat and had prayer without Muslims knowing they did that.” 

The story of the Mashhadi Jews is portrayed in the short film, Mashhad, now playing on ChaiFlicks, a streaming platform dedicated to Jewish content.  

Written and directed by Sarah Solemani—known for her role as Miranda, the best friend in the Bridget Jones franchise—Mashhad is based on Solemani’s grandmother’s life. Set in the 1930s, the film tells the story of Miriam, a young Jewish girl who lives in the Jewish ghetto and struggles to understand why her family hides their Judaism.  

The filmmakers took deliberate steps to ensure authenticity. Although Solemani wrote the script in English, the dialogue is spoken in Farsi. This was the suggestion of Noam Dromi, the managing director and executive producer at Reboot Studios, which produced the film and supports other storytelling projects that explore Jewish identity and culture. 

“I said this should feel like…this could be an Iranian film. And Iran has such a rich history of cinema, and political cinema and subversive cinema,” Dromi said. While economics prevented filming overseas, the crew found the right set in Santa Clarita, California, at the Blue Cloud Movie Ranch. It offers a Middle Eastern town which also served as the backdrop for American Sniper with Bradley Cooper, the series The Old Man with Jeff Bridges, and the opening sequence in the original Iron Man movie with Robert Downey Jr. 

In one scene from Mashhad, Miriam watches as her mother purchases non-kosher meat and later feeds it to the dogs. Hakimian remembers stories of his grandparents participating in the same charade, and then slaughtering an animal in the backyard to get kosher meat. 

By the time he was born, Hakimian said Jews felt safer under the rule of the Shah. Still, the Mashhadi Jewish population had dwindled dramatically. “We didn’t have enough Jews to have a service, so we got everybody together to make ten people, and me and my brother Frank had a bar mitzvah at the same time. I was 16, and he was 13,” he said.  

A few years later, in 1974, Hakimian came to the U.S. in search of the American dream he’d seen in movies. He settled in Chicago, where he estimates there are now fewer than 100 Mashhadi Jews; most Mashhadi Jews went to Great Neck, NY. 

“We are all close. We help each other,” said Hakimian, who brought other family members into the jewelry business and runs a WhatsApp group to give fellow jewelers opportunities to trade merchandise.  

“My dad is a big community builder,” his daughter Shaily Hakimian-Armstrong said. “He made all of these people friends with each other.” She follows in that part of her father’s footsteps as the leader of ChiTribe, a network for young Jewish Chicagoans, and through her own work. Calling herself the “Social Media Sherpa,” Hakimian-Armstrong teaches others how to use social media to achieve their goals. 

While talking with his daughter, Hakimian recognized he’d built a beautiful life in the U.S., and got emotional when talking about the current war in his homeland. 

“I’m happy and sad at the same time. They’re destroying the whole country. I’m hoping they get rid of the regime,” he said. 

Dromi, from Reboot, sees hope in Mashhad. “The film represents a moment to recognize the past, acknowledge the present, and then imagine a more hopeful future.” 

Julie Mangurten Weinberg is a Chicago-based freelance journalist with 25+ years of experience in broadcast, print, and digital media.