When God Sleeps

A love story in the age of terror

“My songs didn’t make me famous. The fatwa did.” And so we embark on the journey of rapper Shahin Najafi, whose bold style and transgressive lyrics put him in the crosshairs of religious clerics in his native Iran. The clerics issued a fatwa for his death incensed by one of his rap songs that focusses on the oppression of women, sexism and human rights abuses.

WHEN GOD SLEEPS tells the story of this tireless artist-activist against the backdrop of the 2015 Paris terrorist attacks and the global right-wing backlash against Middle Eastern refugees. Shahin’s escape leads to an impossible romance when he falls in love with Leili Bazargan, the granddaughter of the first Prime Minister of the Islamic Republic of Iran. With such family backgrounds, Shahin and Leili become a modern day Romeo & Juliet, caught in the storm of Europe’s refugee crisis, rising Trumpism and global anxiety about the increasingly violent clash between art and religion.