Mahmoud Ghaffari

He is an independent Iranian filmmaker, with an internationally recognized career, who has directed a dozen short films and five feature films. His cinema, focused on social issues, is inspired by neorealism and is close to that of Abbas Kiarostami and Asghar Farhadi, with whom he has worked. His feature films It's a Dream (2012), Hair (2016) and No 17 Sohelia (2017) have won awards at several festivals and his film The Apple Day (2022) was selected at the Berlinale 2022, where he went to collect the Best Short Film Award as editor and producer of Deer (2021). With an inherently political oeuvre, where he shows Iranian women without hijab, Ghaffari has been known for his social and protest cinema against the censorship of his country's government. He is currently in exile, where he is working on Cocoon, a film about Iranian girls and the impositions they receive from the government and their families.