Anne Frank: Then and Now presents excerpts from the diary acted by two Israelis and eight Palestinian girls, one of whom performs in front of rubble from an Israeli airstrike

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

A documentary about Anne Frank, shot in Gaza and starring Palestinian girls reading from the German-born Jew’s diary, has been secretly screened in Iran. It’s an event Deadline has called a “clandestine cultural breakthrough” because the country’s Supreme Leader is a Holocaust denier.

Anne Frank: Then and Now was filmed during the 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict. The film is split between an educational documentary about Frank’s time hiding from the Nazis in occupied Holland and excerpts from the diary acted by two Israelis and eight Palestinian girls, one of whom performs in front of the rubble from an Israeli airstrike.

The screening, details of which have been kept secret to protect the organisers, was followed by a one-hour talk about Frank led by the film’s Croatian director Jakov Sedlar.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Supreme Leader of Iran Ayatollah Ali Khamenei marked Holocaust Memorial Day by publishing a video questioning whether the Holocaust took place. Photograph: EPA

“We spoke a lot about the influence of art in today’s world,” he told Deadline. “At the end, one of students told me: ‘Thanks for teaching us about something new.’”

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran, marked Holocaust Memorial Day this year by publishing a video questioning whether the Holocaust took place.

“It is not clear whether the core of this matter is a reality or not,” he says in a video called Are the Dark Ages Over? “Even if it is a reality, it is not clear how it happened.”

Khamenei went on to complain that expressing doubt about the Holocaust is “considered a great sin” in the west, before attacking the “lying” western powers that support the “fake Zionist regime”.

Sedlar, who praised the organisers of the Anne Frank: Then and Now screening for their bravery, said he hoped the film would help spread information about the events of the Holocaust in Iran.

“Tell your friends about Anne Frank,” he told the crowd. “Try to find details of her life; try to learn something about the Holocaust.”