Jafar Panahi

Born in 1960, Jafar Panahi graduated in film directing from the College of Cinema and Television in Tehran. He started his career in cinema in 1986 by directing a short film titled “The Bridge”. His debut feature film “The White Balloon” brought him numerous awards from national and international film festivals. During the 22 years of his active presence in the Iranian cinema, he has directed several shorts and 5 feature films. As one of the most renowned Iranian filmmakers in the international stage, Panahi has received the highest awards of many prestigious film festivals such as Cannes, Locarno, Istanbul, Singapore, Venice, Uruguay, San Sebastian, Chicago, Valladolid and Berlin.

As a new generation filmmaker and a follower of Kiarostami’s school of cinema, Jafar Panahi has managed to create improvised films that have won acclaim on the international stage. Filmmakers of his style focus their efforts on making the best use of spontaneous moments on the set; an approach that will naturally transform the aesthetic standards of cinema, as the filmmaker’s main crutch during the making of the movie is the unlimited variety of spontaneous circumstances and the unexpected incidents which seem to be happening in future, shifting all predictions and at times creating the most delightful and charming scenes of the whole movie.