Z365" or "Festival all year round" is the new strategic point of the Festival in which converge investigation, accompaniment and development of new talents (Ikusmira Berriak, Nest); training and cinematic knowledge transfer (Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola, Zinemaldia + Plus, Filmmakers' dialogue); and investigation, disclosure and cinematic thought (Z70 project, Thought and Discussion and Research and publications).
The Iranian director who won the Special Jury Award at the San Sebastián Festival last year for Two-legged Horse, has wideranging experience as a juror at festivals such as Cannes, Venice, Berlin, Locarno, Moscow or Montreal.
Convinced that political pressures –she cannot shoot films in her country– , give her the energy to express herself, the director considers herself to be a universal artist who wants to articulate a message “that can reach all human beings”.
Her life is marked by the conflicts in her country and her films deal with a raw kind of violence that is sometimes surprising for a Western audience, “used to more conventional films”, and this contrasts with the gentle personality of this young woman dressed in black with her head covered by a green headscarf.
Her dream is “to be able to shoot in Iran again, as this could mean that there is freedom of expression and that living conditions have improved for everyone, although I’m not obsessed with this”.