Despite Ebrahim Golestan’s cultural stature, the relationship between father and daughter was deeply troubled. Lily later described her father as brilliant, nervous, authoritarian, emotionally distant, and profoundly demanding. His artistic ego, combined with traditional patriarchal authority, placed immense psychological pressure on his children.
This emotional conflict reached public attention decades later during Lily Golestan’s 2019 speech at TEDxTehran, where she openly spoke about the trauma of growing up under the shadow of an overwhelming father figure. The speech went viral on Persian social media, receiving over a million views and generating intense public debate about family, patriarchy, artistic tyranny, and emotional violence in elite cultural households.
In response to both public reactions and her own internal need for closure, she later published a memoir titled “I Wanted, It Became”, in which she explored her relationship with her father with rare emotional honesty.
