The Afar

Hadi Afarideh was born in Tehran, Iran in 1984. He started his art career in theater in 1998 and in cinema in 2001 in the Iranian Youth Cinema Society where he graduated with high grades. He was chosen as the best documentary filmmaker in the first specialized workshops of documentary filmmaking in Iran by the Documentary and Experimental Film Center and the Iranian Documentary Filmmakers Association in 2006. Hadi Afarideh has participated in more than 200 Iranian and international festivals and won various awards for the directing, writing, and research of his 3 short films and 30 documentaries Some of the documentaries made by Afarideh have been screened in renowned universities such as UCLA, the Dutch Anthropology Society, and international television channels such as the BBC. Hadi Afarideh is among the Iranian independent filmmakers who were arrested by the Iranian government in September 2011 in charge of the production of independent documentaries and screening them in international festivals and on the BBC. His arrest was widely condemned by international festivals and societies such as the Cannes Film Festival, French Cinematheque, Society of the French Cinema Directors, Society of the French Authors and Musicians, Radio Culture of France, Hollywood Film Production Societies, Oscars Academy, Society of the American Directors and Documentary Filmmakers, Toronto Film Festival, International Filmfestival Mannheim-Heidelberg, and human rights organizations such as Amnesty International. Hadi Afarideh was released after spending his term in prison, and he was banned from leaving the country and he was not allowed to make any film for two years after that.