Samira Makhmalbaf

Samira Makhmalbaf (, Samira Makhmalbaaf; born 15 February 1980) is an Iranian filmmaker and screenwriter.

She is the daughter of Mohsen Makhmalbaf, the film director and writer.

Samira Makhmalbaf is considered to be part of the Iranian New Wave.

She has won multiple awards, including two Jury Prizes at the Cannes Film Festival, and has been nominated for numerous awards.

Samira Makhmalbaf was born 15 February 1980 in Tehran to filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf.

She joined her father on his film sets as a child and watched him edit afterwards.

In her official biography, Makhmalbaf stated that her first taste for cinema came as a 7-year-old when she played a role in her father's film The Cyclist in 1987.

Makhmalbaf left high school when she was 14 years old to study cinema in the Makhmalbaf Film House for five years.

At age 20, she studied Psychology and Law at Roehampton University in London.

At the age of 17, after directing two video productions, Makhmalbaf went on to direct her first feature film, La Pomme (The Apple).

She presented La Pomme at Cannes Film Festival.

In an interview at the London Film Festival in 1998, Samira Makhmalbaf stated that she felt that The Apple owed its existence to the new circumstances and changed the atmosphere in Iran due to the Khatami presidency.

The Apple was invited to more than 100 international film festivals in two years, and going on to the screen in more than thirty countries.

Samira Mohmalbaf also won the Sutherland Trophy at the London Film Festival for The Apple in 1998 and the UNESCO Award at the Venice Film Festival in 2002 for 11'09"01 September 11. In 2003, a panel of critics at the British newspaper The Guardian named Makhmalbaf among the forty best directors at work today.

During the production of Asbe du-pa (Two Legged Horse), Makhmalbaf and her cast and crew suffered an attack while filming in Afghanistan.

Production stopped when a man who infiltrated the set as an extra tossed a hand grenade from the rooftop of a local bazaar.

The attack severely injured six cast members and killed a horse.

In an interview, Makhmalbaf stated: "I saw little boys falling to the ground, and the whole street was full of blood... My first thought was that I wouldn't see my father anymore."

In 2000 she was a member of the jury at the 22nd Moscow International Film Festival.

Samira Makhmalbaf has been the winner and nominee for numerous awards.

She was nominated twice for Golden Palm of Cannes Film Festival for Takhté siah (Blackboards) (2001) and Panj é asr (At Five in the Afternoon) (2003).

She won Prix du Jury of Cannes for both films in 2001 and 2003, respectively.

Determined to carry on, Makhmalbaf completed her film and held the initial release in 2008 in France.

After completing Asbe du-pa, Makhmalbaf earned nominations at various international film festivals, ultimately winning awards at Ghent International Film Festival, San Sebastián International Film Festival and Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival.

Makhmalbaf's films followed applied the doc-fiction hybrid aesthetic of her father's earlier work.

Employing non-professional actors and street-level realism.

Her films have been known to follow a theme of progress and change.

As reflected in her style, she strives to portray real-world political purpose, fully committed to exposing issues such as poverty.

She also tackles topics such as women's rights and education in Panj é asr (At Five in The Afternoon), which centres around a young woman in Afghanistan who sets out to pursue a more open-minded education at a non-religious school.

In an interview with Indiewire, she is asked about the relationship between metaphor and reality in her film Blackboards.

She says: "The first image of the film starts with a very surreal image, but as you go into the film, you can feel the reality of being a fugitive. And I love this image very much, and I think it can carry different meanings. It can express social, intelligent, and poetic meaning -- so many metaphors, and yet you can go into their reality. The idea for the film came to my father's mind when I was looking for a subject to do for my next film. He gave me three or four pages, and then it was time to imagine it. But I couldn't simply imagine it. How can I sit here in Cannes and think of people living in Kurdistan? So I had to go into it and be involved in it. So I cast the actors and found my locations, and at the same time, I let the reality of the situation come in. I don't want to kill the subject, put it in front of the camera, and just shoot it as a dead subject. I let reality come into my imagination.

I believe that metaphors are born from the imagination of the artist and the reality of life, making love to each other.

For example, imagine over a hundred old men wanting to return to their country.

This is imagination and reality.

It's a reality because some older generations want to return to their country to die.

This is real.

But just being old men is imagination.

Or just being one woman is imagination.

Or carrying these whiteboards is a combination of reality and imagination.

Because maybe it's possible, if you're a refugee or a teacher, what can you do except carry your blackboard and look for students?