Mania Akbari

Biography

Mania Akbari was born in 1974 in Tehran, Iran. From the year 1991 she began her career as a painter. She then was exposed to cinema by working as a cinematographer and assistant director on a few documentaries. In the year 2002 herself, her son Amin Maher and her sister Roya Akbari depicted part of her real life in front of the camera for Abbas Kiarostami's “Ten”, which entered the competition at Cannes Film Festival in the same year. The following year she co-directed a documentary called “Crystal”. In 2004 she wrote, acted and directed her first feature length film “20 Fingers”, which won the best film in Venice Film Festival's Digital Cinema section. From there on “20 Fingers” was screened and received awards from more than 40 film festivals around the world. Between the years 2004 to 2007 she made six video Arts, which participated in numerous festivals such as Locarno Film Festival and exhibited at museums such as Tate. In 2007 she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She directed and acted in her second doc-fiction, “10+4”, a sequel to Abbas Kiarostami's “Ten” made four years after. This film was exhibited at numerous festivals such as San Sebastian Int’l F.F. & Cannes F.F in (Acid). This film also received numerous awards such as Nantes Special Public Award, and the award for best film and best director at Kerala Film Festival. From 2007 to 2010 she worked on photo-based works that were featured in galleries and art auctions. In 2010, she made a cautious documentary about the execution of minor in Iran, titled “30 Minutes To 6AM”. She decided to make her third feature length film in 2011 titled One-Two-One, which also was exhibited in numerous film festivals around the world. In the same year she started working on her next film “From Tehran to London”and she finished at the end of 2012. And then she made her new video art " In My Country Men Have Breasts".

Films at the Festival