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Shirin Barghnavard

Director
The Iranian filmmaker Shirin Barghnavard, born in Tehran in 1975, studied film directing at Sooreh University and also earned a master's degree in literature. Her cinematic work focuses on the documentary format, where she often explores social and personal themes. Among her key works are the film "21 Days and Me" (2011) and the documentaries "Scenes from a Divorce" (2015) and "Poets of Life" (2017), which were created in collaboration with Firouzeh Khosrovani. Her works have been screened at renowned festivals such as IDFA and Cinéma du Réel, where she received the Prix de la Scam for "21 Days and Me".

Films

Density of Emptiness

Density of Emptiness

By Shirin Barghnavard

2023 | 20 min | Documentary

The collaborative project by Wim Wenders "A Sense of Place": an investigation into space and social justice in Iran.

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Pix

Pix

2017 | 8 min | Shorts

Baby photos, Christmas snapshots, school enrollment photos, wedding photos - our lives are an endless succession of photogenic moments. A father shoots the first photo of his newborn and sets a cycle in motion. The boy's life passes us by in fast-forward, reduced to the photo-worthy moments of life: the first Christmas, starting school, children's birthdays, the first great love, the wedding, the birth of his own child. The boy himself remains an extra, while his life is built up and dismantled ...

Zownir: Radical Man

Zownir: Radical Man

2006 | 60 min | Biography

Stanley Kubrick's screenwriter and satirical novelist Terry Southern called Miron Zownir the poet of radical photography. Born in Karlsruhe in 1953, Zownir moved to Berlin in 1976 and then to the U.S. in 1981. There he spent 15 years in New York, Los Angeles & Pittsburgh. Zownir is one of the greatest existentialist photographers of our time. His images are icons of lust, pain, hunger, madness, starvation & death.

I Knew You Were My Kind

I Knew You Were My Kind

2023 | 18 min | Shorts

Set in the deserted off-season on the Italian coast, caregivers Anca and Zoya meet at a bus stop shortly before returning home and decide to visit a client's abandoned beach house. A brief vacation turns into a moment of solidarity and tenderness that challenges the structural norms that govern their daily lives. “The discourse on the inner-European class question has never been more present and at the same time more repressed. As a German-Romanian, I encounter these socio-economic conditions every ...

Tomorrow I Leave

Tomorrow I Leave

2024 | 75 min | Documentary

Torn between two worlds: Maria regularly leaves her home in Romania to work as a 24-hour caregiver in Austria. Her sons grow up in Ibănești while she cares for a woman in need of nursing care in Vienna. Every goodbye is difficult, every return is marked by joy, but also by the certainty that she will soon have to leave again. MÂINE MĂ DUC – TOMORROW I LEAVE by Lukas Schöffel and Maria Lisa Pichler is an intimate documentary about the reality of life for many Eastern European caregivers who balance ...

AIDE MÉMOIRE - ein schwules Gedächtnisprotokoll

AIDE MÉMOIRE - ein schwules Gedächtnisprotokoll

1996 | 16 min | Biography

Photographer Jürgen Baldiga (1959-1993) and filmmaker Michael Brynntrup engage in a private discourse and personal investigation into the handling of images of life and death. "AIDE MÉMOIRE recalls a deceased friend in a radically personal way. The intimate, tender gaze of the filmmaker causes a closeness also of the spectators on AIDS disease, death and transience." (Jury statement - International Short Film Festival Oberhausen)

Ella

Ella

2014 | 15 min | Shorts

Ella is a Polish migrant worker who works in Germany to finance her daughter's studies in Poland. Due to illness, her job seems to be in jeopardy. When her daughter decides to come to Germany and faces the same fate as Ella, the mother decides to blackmail her boss for severance pay. The film ELLA deals with social tensions and dependencies that recur in many European migration biographies. The short film focuses on family responsibility, structural exploitation, and the tension between origin and ...

Disappearing

Disappearing

2022 | 98 min | Documentary

In the heart of Southern Carinthia, a story unfolds that is deeply rooted in a century-old decision. In 1920, like many in the Slovenian community of Carinthia, filmmaker Andrina Mracnikar's grandfather voted for Carinthia to remain within the Republic of Austria, an act of self-determination expected to herald a new era of coexistence for the Slovenian minority. However, the reality that unfolded was starkly different, marking the beginning of a century-long struggle against discrimination. Andrina ...

Europa Passage

Europa Passage

2022 | 89 min | Documentary

EUROPA PASSAGE is a profound documentary film by Andrei Schwartz that follows the lives of a group of Romanian Roma over five years. These families commute between their home village of Namaiesti in Romania and Hamburg to earn a living by begging, as there are no job opportunities available to them at home. The film shows the constant challenges and difficulties they face, from discrimination and exclusion from urban emergency programs to the simple living conditions in their village. The story ...

Shot In The Dark

Shot In The Dark

2017 | 79 min | Documentary

"I only understood how powerful light is after I went blind." A documentary about three blind photographers: Pete Eckert, Sonia Soberats and Bruce Hall - three exhibiting artists. What do they see in their mind's eyes? "Even with no input the brain keeps creating images," says Pete Eckert. Sonia Soberats states, "I only understood how powerful light is after I went blind." A blind person is probably the last person you’d expect to be a photographer. Shot in the dark is an intimate portrait of ...

Elfie Semotan, Photographer

Elfie Semotan, Photographer

2019 | 76 min | Documentary

For over half a century, Semotan has worked successfully at the intersection of art, fashion and advertising photography and photographed Louise Bourgeois, Claudia Schiffer, Naomi Campbell, Willem Dafoe, Maria Lassnig or Udo Kier, among others.