From last month,
an interview with Ten's Mania Akbari where she goes into detail about her side of the controversy. She doubles down on her claim that
Ten was a filmed diary she made, with Kiarostami only editing it, and directly accuses him of raping her.
As I said before, without pretending to know what happened I still find the plagiarism claim confusing, beyond the fact that the stabalized camera set-up and well-recorded sound would seem to indicate professional intervention by someone at some point.
—According to Akbari, the
behind-the-scenes footage shared by Ahamd Kiarostami depicts Kiarostami restaging scenes from the original footage, which Kiarostami wanted people to film in order to back up his false claims of authorship. She adds that one obvious piece of evidence for this is that in the behind-the-scenes footage she's not wearing the ring that she wears in the film. But she is wearing this ring in the footage.
—Akbari says everything she shot for
Ten was diary/documentary footage intended solely for personal use, but she also makes references to multiple people performing, insisting that her sister played the character of the sex worker, for one.
—She mentions Kiarostami costuming her and filming her for an insert shot. An elaboration on this point is hidden away in the interview's footnotes:
Mania points out that Kiarostami was not present in the filming of the footage that has been used in the editing of the film. She maintains that Kiarostami shot only three scenes: The one with Kamran Adl (the person who plays the child’s father); the shot where the sex worker gets out of the car; and the shot where the ‘religious woman’ leaves the car. All other footage, Mania states, was shot by herself with her small camera, in the sole presence of her friends and family. She says that Kiarostami shot some additional footage but that none of it was used in the film.
—If
Ten was filmed with only one camera, are the shot-reverse shots in the film a complete fabrication of Kiarostami's editing, the result of scenes staged multiple times, or a fusion of documentary and fictional footage?
I hope more information comes out which clears up the situation, though given the small scale of the production that might be unlikely. Obviously, the accusation of rape is much more serious but I don't have anything to add to that besides the fact that I hope this thread doesn't fall back into rote complaining about cancel culture like it did last time.