Neda Sarmast Limestone College will welcome Iranian-American filmmaker Neda Sarmast to its campus Monday, March 22, for a screening of her powerful documentary “Nobody’s Enemy.” The screening, which will be followed with a question and answer session, will begin at 7 p.m. in Fullerton Auditorium. Sponsored by the Limestone Chaplain’s Office, the event is free and open to the public.

Co-produced with Chat the Planet, “Nobody’s Enemy” is an eye-opening exposé of the youth culture in Iran, lifting the veil of secrecy that has shrouded the faces of Iran’s young people for the past 30 years. It examines their lives, voices and hopes in a time of great change and international instability.

Born in Iran, Sarmast moved to the United States at the age of nine, and has traveled back and forth ever since. She was an eyewitness to the Iran-Iraq war and her memories still haunt her as she lost her best friend to an Iraqi aerial raid.

During the 1979 Iran hostage crisis and again after 9/11, she says that she found herself “defending Iranians and their beliefs to Americans, and in turn defending Americans and their way of life to Iranians.” Fearing that history was about to repeat itself in 2005, Neda left New York and traveled back to Iran to film “Nobody’s Enemy.”

In an interview with Swathmore College’s student newspaper The Phoenix, Sarmast said “(With “Nobody’s Enemy”) my intention, as an Iranian who has lived in America for so many years, was that I really wanted to humanize the culture that I thought was being demonized in the media. Having traveled back and forth to Iran so many times, I always felt that there were so many questions that Americans had about the Iranian people. It was something that was really a calling for me, trying to show a side of the Iranian culture and a side of the youth culture, focusing on the youth because they are 70 percent of the population and I rarely ever saw or heard anything coming out of them.”

Sarmast said that audiences for the documentary may be surprised when they hear that rap music or Persian hip-hop is so prevalent in Iranian culture.

“I have worked for nearly 17 years in music, marketing, management and public relations, so when I went back to Iran, I was just naturally very curious to learn more about the music there. It was my first glimpse into this rich, vibrant music, Persian hip-hop, which has, since the last three, four years, just gotten tremendous. The singers were just talking and singing about things that were important to them. It was completely authentic: they weren’t making money off of it and they weren’t selling music in stores.”

Sarmast explains that the situations that have given rise to the popularity of hip-hop in Iran are similar to its birth in the United States.

“I believe that hip-hop really is music where the truth comes from pain. When it started with the black American culture, they too were also talking about their problems and racism and a lot of the social ills that they had in their lives. Right now in Iran, like in any other country, there are a lot of problems that need focus. Living in Iran, the youth need their stage, their own voice that speaks out for them and to them.”