Asian Cinema Fund

ACF Asian Cinema Fund

Asian Network of Documentary(AND) Fund

2018 Asian Network of Documentary (AND) Fund

LIST The Silhouettes

Category	BIFF Mecenat Fund
Project	The Silhouettes
Director	Afsaneh SALARI
Country	Iran, Philippines
Director's Profile	Afsaneh Salari got her BA in film from Art university of Tehran and her Masters in Creative Directing and Cinematography at Paris 8 university in France. She specialized further in documentary directing by joining the 2-year program of Docnomads in three different film schools in Lisbon, Budapest and Brussels. Her last documentary No Man’s Land (2016) won the Best International Documentary Short in Iranian Cinema Verite Festival. She is an alumni of Berlinale Talents, IDFA Summer School, La Femis Summer School and has recently won Sundance Production grant for her documentary in production The Silhouettes. In 2015 she co-founded Docmaniacs Collective in Tehran where she produces films from the region.

Synopsis: Taghi, an engineering student in Iran, is a dedicated intellectual. He is an inventor and recognized as one of the elites in his circle. At first glance, he is a young man facing a promising future. However, he also carries the burden of a history older than him. Back in 1982, As the USSR started invading Afghanistan, his parents fled to Iran along with 1.5 million others. For his parents, Taghi is lucky to be born in Iran and never to have experienced war. For him, however, safety is no trade-off for freedom. As a second generation refugee, he refuses to inherit the limits of refugee status.?Taghi has a plan. He will go back to Afghanistan to work and live. The gentle family is slowly burdened as its youngest son seeks to break away from the country he grew up in, towards a war-torn homeland he hardly knows. This film takes us to the meeting of a sublime tragedy in a house where the walls of a secure home built by parents are not high enough for the next generation’s dreams.

Director's Note: This film is an invitation to the Safari′s home the way I was first welcomed by them. Through the simplicity and intimacy of their universe, I aspire to shed light on the complexity of refugee life even generations after immigration.

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