Negar azarbayjani biography of martin

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She also has an MA degree in visual media arts from Emerson College in Boston, US. She started her career in pictures by acting in a few TV series and also worked as the assistant editor on the film, Kamal Tabrizi’s SHEYDA. By packaging a relevant social concern within an intelligible circumstance, Facing Mirrors calls upon the audience’s universal senses of humanity: for the Iranian people to accept and understand the transgender community, for the international community to accept and understand Iran.

In 2012, Facing Mirrors received the “Best First Feature” award at San Francisco’s Frameline Film Festival, the first and oldest LGBT film festival in the world.

Ariana Habibi

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Facing Mirrors

(Ayneh-haa-ye Rouberou)

Directed by: Negar Azarbayjani

Written by: Negar Azarbayjani, Fereshteh Taerpour

Producer: Fereshteh Taerpour

DoP: Turaj Mansuri

Editors: Sepideh Abdolvahab, Negar Azarbayjani

Costume & Production Designer: Ghazal Shakeri

Music: Fardin Khalatbari

Sound: Mehran Malakouti

Make-up: Iman Omidvari

Cast: Sheyesteh Irani (Adineh / Eddie), Ghazal Shakeri (Rana), Homayoun Ershadi (Father), Nima Shahrokh Shahi (Brother), Saber Abar (Sadegh).

Iran, 2011, DCP, 2K, Color, 102 mins.

Synopsis:

Rana and Adineh, two young women of opposite background and social classes, are accidentally brought together to share a journey.

Similarly, many have their identities demeaned and disregarded by their own family members—not unlike Eddie’s experience in Facing Mirrors. Adineh, or “Eddie” as she calls herself, is waiting impatiently for her passport to be processed so that she can get female-to-male sex-reassignment surgery in Germany. Although the United States has a tendency to confound issues of trans- and homosexuality, these issues remain decidedly distinct in Iran.

Written by Ariana Habibi

On February 22, 2019, The Program in Iranian Studies at the MacMillan Center hosted a screening of Facing Mirrors (آینه های روبرو⁾ , an Iranian drama film centered upon transgender rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran, for the Yale student body.

Directed by Negar Azarbayjani and released in 2011, Facing Mirrors focuses on two people—Rana and Adineh (Eddie)—who, after crossing paths unexpectedly, become integral to each others’ achievement of freedom.

Sex reassignment surgery is commonplace and conducted very openly; Iran altogether carries out some of the greatest number of sex reassignment operations throughout the world. Where news and politics breed sentiments of animosity and deepen the divide between Iran and the United States, art bridges the gap. Wealthy, yet rebellious, Adineh has escaped from her home.

Although a woman driving a cab is taboo in her social class, she can’t resist when Eddie offers her triple fare to get her to her hideout. It’s a simple story of pure friendship between two women daringly moving beyond social norms as well as traditional beliefs and values.

Director’s Profile:

Born in 1974, Negar Azarbayjani holds a BA degree in cinema from the Art University of Tehran, Iran.

What at first seems like an implausible friendship between Rana and Eddie achieves rare sympathy and solidarity through their mutual oppression, cutting through their class and ethical differences.

This separation is what allows Iran to be among the most progressive in the world in regard to transgender people, in spite of its government notoriety for its mistreatment of homosexual people.

Since the Iranian legal system is based on Islamic jurisprudence, religious leaders hold influential roles in establishing and interpreting the law.

It equals to surpass all the beliefs and the traditions she values.

Director’s View:

FACING MIRRORS is a narrative about humanity.

The government contributes up to half the financial cost of the operation, and issues new birth certificates to recognize and reflect the sex change.

However, in spite of the government’s apparent approval of transgender issues, transgender people continue to face maltreatment and discrimination from a more personal scale.

To an extent, the situation of transgender rights in Iran is almost converse to the situation in the United States: the government is encouraging the people to become more tolerant, as opposed to the people pushing the government to tolerance.

It is plausible that Azarbayjani produced Facing Mirrors both for the pure art of film and for the truth of its message.

On the halfway, Rana realizes that her passenger is a transsexual planning to undergo the operation. After making a number of Shorts and animations both in the US and Iran, she directed her debut feature, FACING MIRRORS, which entered the festival circuit and gained her international recognition.

Feature Films: 2011- FACING MIRRORS; 2017- SEASON OF NARGUES.

World Sales:

Sales: [email protected]
Festivals: [email protected]
www.irimageco.com

Iranian female director Negar Azarbayjani’s first feature is also the first Iranian narrative film with a transgender protagonist.

This remarkable film is anchored by a magnetic, heartbreaking performance by Shayesteh Irani as Eddie, who also played the butchest of the forbidden female soccer fans in the banned director Jafar Panahi’s Offside.

While “sex” refers to the biological factors that distinguish males and females from one other, “gender” refers to the social roles that individuals play in any given identification framework within which they interact. As a result of this, sex change is both lawful and legal in modern-day Iran. Following the ascension of the Islamic regime, specifically after a fatwa delivered by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1987, transgender individuals became officially recognized by the government, and were permitted to undergo sex reassignment surgery.