Iran-born, UK-based writer/director Fateme Ahmadi has an ambitious series of projects underway. She is in post on debut feature Daughter Of Eden, an English and Arabic-language psychological thriller about a British Iraqi nurse.
The BFI, BBC Film and Screen Ireland-backed project shot in Ireland last year, doubling for 2006 London, with Lunapark Pictures, Shudder Films and Newgrange Pictures producing.
Ahmadi plans for Daughter Of Eden to be the first in a trilogy of psychological thrillers, each rooted in a different London community. Beyond this, she has feature Saba And The Sun in the works, about a British Iranian woman taking her mother-in-law, who has dementia, on an imaginary pilgrimage to a tree in Iran that grants wishes.
Ahmadi was born in Shiraz and had an early taste for filmmaking at the Iranian Youth Cinema Society. “When you grow up in Iran, cinema is part of the culture,” she says. “It influences you, whether you realise it or not.” In Tehran, Ahmadi completed undergraduate degrees in Persian literature and cinema, and an MA in linguistics. She settled in the UK after winning a filmmaking MA scholarship at London Film School.
A love of linguistics is stamped across her filmmaking: she has made shorts in five languages to-date, while being fluent only in English and Persian. These include Romanian and English-language Bifa 2018-nominated Bitter Sea, Cannes Directors’ Fortnight 2018 premiere Leila’s Blues, in Arabic, and Busan and Locarno 2015 title Chandra, which she co-directed, in Nepali. She was also an associate producer on Taghi Amirani’s 2019 feature documentary Coup 53.
Ahmadi takes inspiration from Abbas Kiarostami, whose films outside Iran include Like Someone In Love in Japan. “He was not afraid of making films in languages he couldn’t speak well,” she explains. “The language of cinema is universal. The visuals are going to do the heavy lifting – you shouldn’t be afraid of just the verbal language.”
Contact: Kelly Knatchbull, Sayle Screen
No comments yet