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
Mohsen Tanabandeh
Born in 1975 in Tehran, Mohsen Tanabandeh is an actor, screenwriter and director. He is a graduate of Acting from Art and Architecture University and started his career in 1992 in theatre. The Oath is his second feature film.
Kianoush Ayari
Kianoush Ayari is a director and screenwriter who was born in 1951 in Ahvaz, Iran. He began his career as film critic, editor and screenwriter. In 1970 he joined the Ahvaz Free Cinema Group and has won Silver Leopard from Locarno International Film Festival in 1994 and two Crystal Simorgh for Best director from Fajr Film Festival.
Arash Eshaghi
Arash Eshaghi was born in 1976 in Iran. He graduated from Allame Tabatabei University majoring in literature. Arash has two decades experience in film directing, researching, writing, editing and sound.
Soudabeh Beizaee
Soudabeh Beizaee is a Persian literature graduate from Ahvaz University. She started her career by playing in feature films. Then she began writing screenplays and eventually became interested in documentary filmmaking.
Ali Shilandari
Ali Shilandari is an award-winning Iranian director based in Iran. Prior to making his first feature length documentary, Fading Portraits, he worked as a cinematographer in several films including Cypher and Lion, Jenayat-e Movajah and a few short films. He took up photography in his early 20s and is one of the founding members of Isfahan’s Society of Photographers
SYD | Palace Central
Broadway, Chippendale NSW 2008
Eléa Gobbé-Mévellec
Eléa Gobbé-Mévellec was born in France in 1985. She studied animation at the Gobelins School in Paris for three years, where she completed two short films: Madame (2005), a musical short about children, and Traintamarre (2006), that was screened at the International Animation Film Festival of Annecy. She was a character animator on the feature film Le Chat du Rabbin (2009) and Le Jour des Corneilles (2010).
Zabou Breitman
Zabou Breitman, or simply Zabou, is a French actress and director. She is the daughter of actors Jean-Claude Deret and Céline Léger. At the age of four, she appeared in her first movie. Since 1981, Zabou has acted in dozens of roles in films, TV movies, and theaters. She made her directoral debut in 2001 with Se souvenir des belles choses, for which she won a César Award for Best Debut.
Safi Yazdanian
Born in 1960 in Tehran, Safi Yazdanian studied Cinema at the University of Arts and started his career as a critic and essayist in magazines. His earliest films were documentaries and short films namely Breath (2000), Looking for Shahrzad (2002), My Boats (2005) and Entracte (2010). His first feature directorial debut was What's The Time In Your World? (2014) and his latest feature film is Suddenly a Tree (2019).
Alireza Motamedi
Born in 1978 in Isfahan, Alireza Motamedi is a graduate of Persian Literature and has been involved as a writer, poet, film critic and scriptwriter in 20 years. He has written scripts for more than 20 feature films and TV series and Reza is his debut feature film.
Shahrbanoo Sadat
Shahrbanoo is an Afghan, female writer and director, based in Kabul. She studied at Atelier Varan Kabul. Her first feature film Wolf and Sheep was developed with the Cannes Cinéfondation Residence in 2010. Shahr - 20 years old at the time- was the youngest ever selected. The film won the main award at Director’s Fortnight 2016. Her second feature film is also after Wolf and Sheep the second part of a planned pentalogy, five films based on an unpublished autobiography. It will be presented at Director's Fortnight in 2019.
Arash Lahooti
Born in 1982 in Tehran, Arash Lahooti is a graduate of Film Editing from Yazd Applied Science College and then, he was involved in making documentaries. As one of the most successful Iranian documentary filmmakers, Arash Lahooti has made 5 documentaries which have been shown in more than 100 film festivals around the world and have collected 25 national and international awards like Golden Hugu of Best Documentary at Chicago Film Festival in 2013. Orange Days is Lahooti’s debut feature film.
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.