Official Selection | Features
Official Selection | Shorts
Festival Poster
4th Edition
The 4th Persian Film Festival opened with the highly anticipated Australian premiere of Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s award-winning feature The President. The festival hosted eight national and international guests, including Alireza Amini and Bita Beigi from Iran, Saeed Sourati and Nora Niasari from Australia, and Alexandria Bombach from the USA. The festival guests engaged audiences in Q&A sessions after their screenings.
Poster of the 4th Persian Film Festival
Designed by Amin Palangi
Festival Guests
Faezeh Alavi
Faezeh Alavi is an Iranian filmmaker and actress, Faezeh gained her bachelor's degree in Theatre Directing at Sooreh Art University and a Master of Arts in puppet theatre at the Art University of Tehran. Faezeh arrived in Melbourne, Australia in 2016 to pursue her career in filmmaking.
Mohsen Banihashemi
Mohsen Banihashemi was born in 1992 in Abhar, Iran. He is a theatre directing graduate. He has written several plays at University. Experimentalism in his works made him being admired in Festivals. "Staircase" (2018), his first short film, world premiered at Oscar qualifying 75th Venice Film Festival - Orizzonti.
Siavash Shahabi
Siavash Shahabi was born in Tabriz/Iran in 23rd August, 1993. When he was studying in mathematics in high school, simultaneously and following to his interest, started his filmmaking. He continued his education in university and received The Bachelor of Fine Arts in Theatre Directing. His works often search for the psychological effects of human attitude on each other, based on their social status. He has made eight experimental, documentary and fiction short films. Participating in several national and international festivals, he has received awards for them.
Kaveh Tehrani
Kaveh Tehrani (b. 1978 in Tehran, Iran) is a Norwegian-Iranian filmmaker. He holds a bachelor degree in film and literature studies from the University of Oslo, along with a degree from the European Film College in Ebeltoft, Denmark. Tehrani has written and directed the short films 1994 (2010), Victor (2014) and The Manchador (2019). He has won several awards at various international film festivals, and his films have also screened on BBC Persian and Norwegian National Television (NRK). For 1994 Tehrani won the National Film Award Amanda for best short film.
Arman Khansarian
Arman Khansarian is a director, screenwriter and cinema writer. The short film "Shadow of the Elephant" directed by Khansarian entered the Regard International Film Festival in Canada and competed in receiving four awards from this festival. His other film, "Sabz Kaleh Ghazi", was nominated for the Crystal Simorgh award for the best short fiction film from the 35th Fajr Film Festival. He also co-wrote the film Abar Baranesh Geghre with Majid Barzegar .
Kimia Hendi
An independent filmmaker originally from Iran, Kimia Hendi studied a Bachelor of Cinema, specialized in Cinematography, at Tehran’s University of Art. Having then completed her Masters of Film & TV at the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA), winning Outstanding Achievement Award 2018. Since 2015, she has made four short films and a documentary "Adam and Eves". She most recently won MIFF Emerging Australian Director 2019.
Fatemeh Ahmadi
Fateme Ahmadi is an Iranian-British writer and director who graduated from the London Film School. Her shorts received recognition at festivals worldwide, including BIFA-nominated BITTER SEA and LEILA’S BLUES, made through Tunisia Factory and screened in Cannes Directors’ Fortnight. Fateme is an alumna of Berlinale Talents and Edinburgh Talent Lab, a Film London Lodestar as well as a recipient of the John Brabourne Award. She was selected by Riz Ahmed’s Left Handed Films and Pillars Fund as one of their 2022 Pillars Artist Fellows. Fateme is currently in development with the BFI Film Fund on her first feature, Daughter of Eden, which was selected for Torino Film Lab Next and EIFF Talent Lab Connects. She is mentored by Marjane Satrapi (BAFTA-nominated writer/director, Persepolis, Radioactive). In addition to her narrative work, Fateme also worked as the associate producer of Coup 53, directed by Taghi Amirani and edited by Walter Murch.
Ali Farahani
Ali Farahani was born in 1984 in Tehran. He has a BA in cinema from Sooreh Art University of Tehran. His major was script writing and during his study, roughly between 2007 and 2012, he was a film critic in Iranian press. In this period, he wrote more than 50 critical essays and reviews which were publish in FilmNegar magazine. He has been also directing commercials for a short period and has been teaching digital cinematography in Tehran Institute of Technology. He made his first short fiction-experimental film, TANAVOB (PERIODICITY) after his BA study. TANAVOB won the best short film in 33th Tehran short festival (National Section) and the Sepanta Award for the Best short film and the Best directing of a short film at the 10th Iranian film festival San Francisco (IFF) in 2017.
Reza Tofighjoo
Reza Tofighjoo started his career as a film critic for various film magazine and papers. He worked as an assistant director to well-known Iranian directors including Nasser Taghvaie and work both in Theatre and Cinema as director. He has made documentaries and music videos and have written and directed several short films such as Waran The Beast of Lust and Whooping Cough.
Atefeh Mehrabi
Atefeh Mehrabi ( born in February 28, 1990 in Tehran, Iran ) is an Iranian film director, film producer, teacher of Display kids artwork and journalist on film. He graduated from Sooreh University with a master's degree of Film in Directing. her films have been praised at national and international festivals.
Saleh Kashefi
Saleh Kashefi (born in Tehran August 1st, 1999) is an Iranian Director, Actor, Screenwriter, Editor and Graphic Designer. He has made four main short films which have been in more than 75 film festivals around the world and have won 19 awards. He began his career as a child actor when he was 9 years old before starting to make films when he was 12 years old. He won an award for best short film in under 15 category in 2013 when he was 13 for a music video he made called “I love life“ in City‘s Moths Film Festival in Iran. He made his first serious fiction short film, “The Three Letter Word“ when he was 17 which was selected in 8 International film festivals and his second short film “Arian Said: I Wanna Play Too“ was selected in 5 International film festivals. His most successful short film is his third made in 2018 and the third short film in the same year called “A Pair of Horns on a Female Homo Sapiens“ which was selected in more than 48 International film festivals and won 11 awards. His fourth short film called “ She Who Wasn't Tamed“ has just started its festival run and has been in 19 film festivals and won two awards until now. Since 2009, he has acted in more than ten plays and television films but he has stopped acting since 2016 and focused on directing. He‘s a graduated scholar student at Iranian Youth Cinema Society and a member of FIFF‘s Talent Campus 2019. He is the only artist invited for the Basel House of Film‘s Artist Residency Program and is spending three months in Switzerland to work on his first feature film. He has recently started a Film Distribution Company called Synesthesia Films (synesthesiafilms.com) for student short films around the world and they have a selection of films from China, Germany, Turkey and Iran right now.
Arman Fayyaz
Born in Iahijan (Iran) in 1982. Masters degree of cinema ,director of photography of more than 100 films (fiction, and documentaries and short films). Director of five short films: Manicure (2017), White blossom (2010), Tea (2009), The song I heard with you (2007) and When (2005).
Special Event
Love Marriage in Kabul: Fundraiser
The festival hosted a special fundraiser screening of Amin Palangi’s award winning Love Marriage in Kabul and donated the proceeding to Mahboba’s Promise Charity.