Shirin Barghnavard

Born 1976 in Tehran/Iran.

Shirin Barghnavard is a documentary filmmaker and editor. She got a bachelor degree from Sooreh University of Tehran in film directing in 2000. Five years later she received a »diploma in Screen« audiovisual media from the Central Institute of Technology in Perth/Western Australia.

Since 1999, she has been actively working as a freelance writer, director and producer of many short and feature length fiction and documentary films. Besides, she started in 2013 working as a documentary film editor.

Among others, she realized Profession: Documentarist (2014), Scenes from a Divorce (2015), Poets of Life (2017) and Invisible (2019). She has edited numerous documentary films including Hey Humans (2016) by renowned Iranian filmmaker Rakhshan Bani Etemad, and Firoozeh Khosrovani’s award-winning film Fest of Duty (2014).

In her documentary films, Shirin Barghnavard combines general social issues with specific research on the role of women in the society. Together with a collective of filmmakers, she realized the film Profession: Documentarist in 2014. From the perspective of seven female filmmakers in Tehran, it discusses the working conditions of filmmakers during the election and the political and economic crisis in Iran.

Selected awards: Special Jury Award at 14th Green Film Festival in Seoul (2017), Best Documentary Film in the 4th Afghanistan International Women Film Festival (2016), Tim Hetherington Award in Sheffield Doc/Fest (2014), Audience Award at Cairo International Women’s Film Festival (2014), Jury Award at Mumbai Women International Documentary Film Festival (2014).

From October 2017 to January 2018 she was the second scholarship holder of the Harun Farocki residency in Berlin. Shirin Barghnavard is a fellow in cooperation with Merz Akademie – Hochschule für Gestaltung, Kunst und Medien, Stuttgart.