Shirin Neshat (b. 1957, Ghazvin, Iran) grew up in a well-placed Iranian family with pro-Western views. At age 17, she left for Berkeley to study at the University of California, then made her way in the USA as a photographer. She came to narrative film via lyrical video installations (eg. "Rapture", 1999, "Turbulent", 1998), and she has enjoyed independent shows at New York's Whitney Museum, and the Musée d'Art Contemporain in Montreal. The main topics of her work have long been gender politics and cultural self-definition. Her directorial debut Women Without Men, which she shot in Morocco as a loose follow-up to her previous work (primarily "Zarin," a video installation, 2005), earned her a Silver Lion at the Venice IFF 2009. She lives in New York, and has been barred from returning to her native country for her unambiguous criticism of the position of women in Iranian Muslim society.
MFF Karlovy Vary
