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
Hossein Mahkam
Born in Tehran, in 1980, Hossein Mahkam is a graduate of Philosophy from Tehran University. He is a veteran theater playwright and director who has directed several stage productions. He has written and published four books of short stories and is teaching scriptwriting in film schools.
Suzan Iravanian
Born in 1985 in Shiraz, Iran, Suzan Iravanian holds a BA in Art and Architecture and MA in Cult Film from Brunel University as well as an MA in Filmmaking from the New York Film Academy. Since 2009, Iravanian has been involved in the production of short films and in 2015, she started working on her first feature film, Leakage, premiering at the 2019 Berlinale. She is also a writer, photographer and graphic designer.
Kourosh Ataee
Kourosh Ataee was born in 1990. He started his career by attending the training courses of filmmaking at the Iran Young Cinema Society in 2007. He received a BA in directing and an MA in drama literature from the Cinema & Theatre Faculty of the Tehran University of Arts. He has worked as an assistant director and script advisor on short and feature films and TV series, and has directed two short fiction films. His mid-length documentary From Iran, A Separation has been shown at different festivals around the world and received awards. Finding Farideh is his first feature documentary film.
Azadeh Mousavi
Azadeh Moussavi was born in 1980 in Tehran. He has a BA in directing from the Cinema & Theatre Faculty of the Tehran University of Arts. He started working as the Assistant Director and Script Advisor in a short, feature, fiction and documentary films, and has also directed two short fiction and one short documentary film. His mid-length documentary From Iran, A Separation was shown at different festivals around the world and received awards. Finding Farideh is his first feature documentary film.
Yaser Talebi
Yaser Talebi was born in Sari, North of Iran, in 1982. A film director, producer, screenwriter and Editor. He has been famous as a creative director and aesthetic expert. He travels around his home town meeting its people and exploring the environment, history and culture of the different regions.
Majid-Reza Mostafavi
Majid-Reza Mostafavi was born in Iran in 1984. He started his film career by editing and making short films. His first feature film Unripe Pomegranates (2014) was screened in the main competition sections of more than 10 international film festivals including Moscow 2014, Sao Paulo 2014, Fukuoka 2015 and Zürich 2015. Astigmatism is his second feature film. Mostafavi has always tried to deal with the forgotten class and the important but less seen events with a human theme in his films.
Rouhollah Hejazi
Born in Abadan in 1979, Rouhollah Hejazi directed his first short film, “Start”, in 1995, then followed up with ten more, shown at domestic and international festivals. He directed television dramas before making his debut feature film “Among the Clouds” in 2008, which garnered several awards at festivals around the world. His second feature film, "The Private Life of Mr. & Mrs. M” (2012), third film, "The Wedlock” (2013) and “Death of the Fish” (2015), were shown at numerous international film festivals too.
Bahram Tavakoli
Bahram Tavakoli is an Iranian film director. Winning numerous awards, he is a well-established filmmaker of the new generation of Iranian cinema. One of his most successful works is 'Here without Me (2011). It is a breathtaking adaptation of Tennessee Williams 'The Glass Menagerie' which was not only directed, but also written by Tavakoli.
Mona Zandi Haghighi
Mona Zandi Haghighi was born on October 20, 1972 in Tehran, Iran. She is a Writer, Director, Producer and Editor of short films, documentaries and feature films. Her art works belong to the cinema of post-revolutionary Iran, which focuses on contemporary social issues within Persian culture.
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.
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.
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.
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.