Official Selection | Features
Official Selection | Shorts
Festival Poster
7th Edition
The 7th Persian Film Festival presented some of the greatest, most courageous and artistic works by Persian-speaking filmmakers from across the globe to Sydney and Melbourne.
Poster of the 7th Persian Film Festival
Designed by Saba Taghavi
Festival Jury
Ester Harding
Ester Harding is a creative producer, working across film, television and multiplatform content. For See Pictures, she served as production executive on feature drama BREATH, co-produced feature comedy SWINGING SAFARI, and produced REMEMBERING AGATHA, a half-hour film for the ABC. Previously, for Media Stockade Ester co-produced feature documentary I AM A GIRL and line-produced broadcast documentary THE SURGERY SHIP for the ABC; for Firelight Productions / 6ixty Foot Films she was the All Media Producer for multiplatform documentary project STORM SURFERS 3D; and for Freehand Productions produced interactive documentary AFTER SIX-FOUR. She has recently joined Screen Australia as a Development Executive.
Fereydoun Mehrabi
Fereydoun is an Iranian actor and theatre director. Hehas performed and directed more than 40 plays and acted in numerous TV series and features. He has also been a lecturer at University of Art (Cinema and Theatre) and University of Art and Architecture in Iran.
Andrea Demetriades
Andrea has worked consistently in Film, TV and Theatre since graduating from NIDA in 2006. Feature films include Adam & Eve, Around the Blockand Nerve. Television includes Pulse,Seven Types of Ambiguity, Janet Kingseries 1, 2 & 3, Crowniesand The Principal. Other TV credits include Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, Mr & Mrs Murder, Think Tank and All Saints. Andrea has worked in theatre across the country including Arcadia, Arms and the Man, Perplexand Pygmalionfor STC, The Dog/The Cat, The Book of Everything, Oedipus Rexfor Belvoir, A Beautiful Lifefor Riverside, Intimate Letters, Romeo & Juliet, Twelfth Nightand Pericles for Bell Shakespeare Co. She has also appeared in Helly’s Magic Cupfor STCSA and Winter for the Griffin Theatre. More recently she had starred in Antigone for Sport for Jove.
David White
David White is an Australian Sound Designer and Sound Editor best known for his role as the sound designer of the 2015 film Mad Max: Fury Road. White won the Academy Award for Best Sound Editing for the 2015 film Mad Max: Fury Road with fellow sound editor Mark Mangini.
Golden Gazelle Award
Academic Program
Michelle Langford
Dr Michelle Langford is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies in the School of the Arts and Media at the University of New South Wales, Sydney. Her research spans the cinemas of Iran and Germany. Her research on Iranian cinema has focussed on gender, allegory and aesthetics and had appeared in leading film studies journals including Camera Obscura, Screenand Screening the Past. Her forthcoming book is entitled Allegory in Iranian Cinema: The Aesthetics of Poetry and Resistance(Bloomsbury). Her current research project looks at the German films of Iranian filmmaker Sohrab Shahid Saless.
Hadi Nojoumian
Dr Hadi Nojoumian is cardiologist in practice and a senior lecturer at the department of medicine New England University. He has an interest in medical humanities and philosophy of medicine. He is one of the founding members of Honar Andishi which is a monthly literary and film study meeting in Sydney.
Elham Naeej
Dr Elham Naeej is a Research Fellow at Deakin University and UNSW. Her thesis project delves into the contemporary Iranian romance novels for topics like women's capital, women’s body, and women's identity. It is a genre and gender analysis and will include topics like gender violence, captivity and autonomy in the romance novels.
Afshin Forghani
Afshin Forghani is an independent art critic who has published in Iranian magazines, “Scenes of Cinema” and “Cine-Eye”. He also has made a number of award-winning short films and was the first assistant director on many Iranian TV series and films (including works by Asghar Farhadi and Behnam Behzadi). He is the co-founder of a Persian art critic group called “Hanar Andishi” in Sydney and runs film discussion sessions in “Azadi Movie and Cultural Club” while undertaking his main job as a General Practitioner.
Sensuality and Desire in Iranian Cinema
In the aftermath of the Iranian revolution of 1979, the film industry was subjected to a process of purification. For almost four decades, explicit treatment of sex and sensuality has been forbidden from Iranian films. This has greatly affected the ways that intimate relationships are represented, with men and women forbidden from touching, and sensuality couched in abstract, poetic terms. However, in recent years, more filmmakers have tested the boundaries of Iranian censorship and have dared to allude more explicitly to sexual relations. This panel will discuss how contemporary Iranian filmmakers working both in Iran and the diasporas deal with this topic.