Title: The Siren
Directors: Sepideh Farsi
Screenplay: Javad Djavahery
Animation: Zaven Najjar
Editing: Grégoire Sivan, Isabelle Manquillet
Music: Erik Truffaz
Sound Design: Benoît Gargonne
Voices: Mina Kavani, Hadmidreza Djavdan
Production: Sébastien Onomo (LES FILMS D’ICI)
Year: 2021
Country: France, Germany and Luxemburg
Length: 1h 30min
Synopsis
1980, Abadan. The capital of the Iranian oil industry is resisting an Iraqi siege. Fourteen-year-old Omid has braved the siege and stayed in the city with his grandfather, waiting for his elder brother to return from the front line. Along with Omid, a gallery of unusual characters have all remained in the city for their own reasons, and each resists in his or her own way. But the noose is tightening as Omid tries to save his loved ones, by embarking them on an abandoned boat, he finds in Abadan’s port, that will become his ark.
Biography
Tehran-born Sepideh Farsi started working in cinema after moving to Paris in 1984. One of her first works was a documentary about the Iranian diaspora, The World is My Home. As her films started gaining recognition and winning awards around the world she never lost her connection to her country and made severals film exploring questions of identity and diaspora. In spring 2008,, she shot Tehran Without Permission with a cell phone (due to government restrictions on filming).
The film and her political engagements led to her being banned from her country in 2009, and still to this day. Nevertheless with her films she continues to challenge and break Iranian cinema’s taboos. In 2014 she made the film Red Rose, which includes sex scenes and addresses the relationships between the generation of young protesters and the generation that had challenged the Shah’s regime. Her last documentary 7 Veils won the Grand Prize of FIDMarseille – International Film Festival Marseille in 2017. Farsi’s latest film The Siren is her first animated feature film.
Sepideh Farsi will attend Umbria Film Festival presenting the Italian premiere of her latest project on Friday, July 7.