Mania Akbari - Biography

Biography

Mania Akbari was born in 1974 in Tehran, Iran. In 1991 she began her career by exhibiting nationally and internationally in group and solo exhibitions as a painter. She then was exposed to cinema by working as a cinematographer and assistant director on a few documentaries.

In 2002 she, her son Amin Maher and her sister Roya Akbari depicted part of her real life in front of the camera for Abbas Kiarostami's Ten, which entered the competition at Cannes Film Festival in the same year. The following year she made a documentary called Crystal. In 2004 she wrote, starred in and directed her first feature length film 20 Fingers, which won the best film in Venice Film Festival's Digital Cinema section. From there on 20 Fingers was screened and received awards from more than 40 film festivals around the world. Between the years 2004 to 2007 she made 6 Video Arts titled Self, Repression, Sin, Escape, Fear, and Destruction, which participated in numerous festivals such as Locarno Film Festival and exhibited at museums such as Tate Modern. In 2007 she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She directed and acted in her second feature film, 10+4, a sequel to Abbas Kiarostami's Ten made four years after. This film was exhibited at numerous festivals such as San Sebastian International Film Festival. This film also received numerous awards such as the Nantes Special Award, and the award for best film and best director at Kerala Film Festival.

From 2007 to 2010, she worked on numerous photo-based works that were featured in various galleries and art auctions. After the internal struggle and conflict of 2010 in Iran, she made a cautious documentary about the execution of Behnoud Shojaee, titled 30 Minutes To 6. Although the filmmaking atmosphere was becoming more closed and controlled, she decided to make her third feature length film in 2011 titled OneTwoOne, which also was exhibited in numerous film festivals around the world. In the same year, she started working on her next film, originally titled Women Do Not Have Breasts. She wrote, directed and acted in this film as well. During the making of this film numerous filmmakers were arrested in Iran, and since the state confined limit of expression contradicted her thoughts and true self and the barred atmosphere distanced her from her mode of expression, she left Iran with her film forever. She finished the rest of her film in London in 2012 and changed the title of the film to From Tehran To London followed by that she made two short video arts titled "In My Country, Men Have Breasts," and "I slept with my mother, my father, my brother and my sister in a country called Iran."