Sepideh Farsi

An Iranian filmmaker participates in a series of video calls with a young Palestinian photojournalist who describes her life confined in Gaza during the current regional conflict.

November 1980. Southern Iran. We are at the beginning of the Iran-Iraq war. Abadan, the capital of the Iranian petrol industry resists the repeated assaults of the Iraqi army, but is soon under full siege. Omid, a 14-year-old boy, has stayed back in the city, with his grandfather, waiting for his elder brother to come back from the frontline. Along with Omid, we discover several other uncommon characters, each one having stayed for a personal reason. Each one resisting in his own way. But as the Iraqi siege of the city hardens, Omid has to quickly find a way to save those he loves.

For the 30th anniversaire of FIDMarseille about thirty directors have done us the honor of offering us some very beautiful short films.

"Morteza, in his fifties and just out of jail, is trying to rebuild his life. However, when he is implicated in the drowning death of a child, he is instantly assumed to be guilty. Taher, the police officer assigned to the case, first believes in his guilt, but later becomes obsessed with proving Morteza's innocence. Directed by Sepideh Farsi, and stars Masoud Rayegany and Bijan Emkanian.

A politically complacent middle-aged man and a young pro-democracy activist debate about the future of their country while hiding from the police, in this fascinating drama that blends scripted scenes with on-the-ground footage from Iran’s 2009 Green Revolution.

The brief but intense encounter of a Greek police officer and a Syrian refugee changes the way the two see this world.

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Karun, a stray dog, fights to survive in a chaotic environment ravaged by drought.

Sepideh Farsi left Tehran in her teens, yet has always remained under the spell of Iran's lively capital. In 'Tehran Without Permission', Farsi creates a collage-style portrait of a city in flux. Via a mixture of characters and cityscapes, Farsi's covert filming reveals a city beset with social and political tensions, yet held aloft by the indomitable spirit and character of its population.

The film is a well dug into the past. Made with bits of an unfinished film, "Red Shoes,” which was to be the director's very first auto-produced short film, but that remained “unborn” due to lack of money. What links the 16 mm footage that is the body of the present film, the poem that represents the heart of it, and the finished opus Letter to an Unborn Child represents close to thirty years of the Sepideh Farsi's life.

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From Afghanistan, little is known but a few cliches, the word Taliban, and a war that seems to have never ceased since the Soviet era and its new turn taken since 2001. A country devastated in a state of permanent conflict, a population deeply marked: how to do it justice? Equipped with her only camera, reconnecting with her beginnings on documentaries, the director embraces the beautiful ambition to reach the intimate heart of the country.

Sepideh and Darya. Mother and daughter. A successful young filmmaker and a child with clear ideas about how to make a film. Together they make a long journey to meet members of their large family: From Paris to Tehran and further beyond the Afghanistan border. By air, train, car, they never leave the tools of their trade: two video cameras, one of which is so small that it goes by unseen. On the way, they encounter landscapes, villages, voices and faces, too long separated by distance or disparate destinies. Travel time, story time: at night, Sepideh transforms their story into a bedtime lullaby for her daughter. The complex ramifications of a genealogical tree are gathered in a subtle family album.

An insight into today's Iran, through a simple device: following a group of firemen in Tehran. We shall see the country in its critical moments, when tongues untie, when gestures are more spontaneous, and doors open more easily.

“He said Mr. Sethna, what are you? I said I’m a human being. Then… I’m an Indian. Then I suppose, I am a Zoroastrian, or if you like, a Parsi. Then my profession. I’m a filmmaker.” A journey through a very unusual old man’s life in Bombay.