Sepideh Farsi was born in Tehran and came to Paris in 1984 to study mathematics, but soon drifted towards cinema. One of her first works was a documentary about the Iranian diaspora, The World Is My Home. Two years later, she continued her career with a portrait of the Indian filmmaker Homi Sethna, which won the Fipresci Prize in Bombay and two more prizes in France (Cinéma du Réel). Still connected to her country, she followed up with Men of Fire, a reportage about the firefighters of Tehran.
In 2002, she returned to a question of identity with her film Journey of Maryam, in which a girl searches for her father and discovers with her own eyes a country besieged by religion. In 2003 followed Dreams of Dust, depicting a journey between life and death. In 2006, she shot The Gaze, in which the theme of exile and return to the country is again central to the plot.
In spring 2008, again roaming Tehran, she shot Tehran Without Permission with a cell phone (due to government restrictions on filming). In 2009, she was a member of the jury for Best First Feature at the Locarno International Film Festival. The film and her political engagements led to her being banned from her country since 2009. In 2014 she made Red Rose, which breaks the taboos of Iranian cinema by including sex scenes and addressing the relationships between the young protest generation and the generation that had challenged the Shah’s regime. Her last documentary 7 Veils won the Grand Prize of FIDMarseille – International Film Festival Marseille in 2017. Farsi’s latest film The Siren is her first animated feature film.
The Asia Pacific Screen Academy expresses its respect for and acknowledgement of the South East Queensland Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. We pay our respects to the Traditional Owners of country, including the custodial communities on whose land works are created and celebrated by the Asia Pacific Screen Awards. We acknowledge the continuing connection to land, waters and communities. We also pay our respects to Elders, past and emerging. We recognise the integral role Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and First Nations peoples continue to play in storytelling and celebration spaces.
