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Amina Maher is also a transgender activist and queer feminist. She broke her silence publicly about her own experiences of childhood sexual abuse over a year period in August 2020 in an interview with Iran International TV. With the same interview, she outed herself as a queer trans woman. She appeared on TV with a sexy purple dress, pink bra, and her body hair out of her chest. This was the first time that such an interview was shown in Farsi-speaking mainstream media. She has been involved in several cases of sexual abuse for women and LGBTQIA+ empowerment. She is the daughter of the female filmmaker Mania Akbari. Since an early age, she has been in cinema. She was filmed unknowingly at the age of ten on the passenger seat of her mother´s car. The material shaped over thirty minutes of the film nominated for the Palmedór at Cannes 2002. Maher is also a sex-positive performer, sex worker, and poet. Her activism encourages people to embrace vulnerability and self-love. Since the age of fifteen, she began to live on her own. She was arrested two times in Iran and spent a week in Evin prison in 2011 where she was tortured and beaten up. She subsequently left Iran to Dubai and then to Malaysia where she studied her BA in filmmaking.
Country: Iran
T-Port Partner: AG Kurzfilm
Webpage: https://www.aminmaher.com
Bio: Amina Maher is a queer feminist filmmaker, activist and artist who was born in 1992 in Tehran, Iran. The child of a war veteran started writing poems and short stories at a very early age. Her works train her unblinking gaze on the breakdown of the family structure, shame culture, and patriarchal myths. Her cinematic activity began as the main actor in Abbas Kiarostami and Mania Akbari´s Ten (2002) nominated for the Palmedór at Cannes. She was unknowingly filmed in the passenger seat of her mother´s car. Since then, she acted, edited, and has been in films that have been part of festivals such as Cannes, BFI, San Sebastian, and Rotterdam. Her directorial short films have been internationally well received with +200 festival participations and +50 Awards from festivals such as Ann Arbor, Kasseler Doc, Guanajuato (GIFF), Mexico Shorts, New Fest New York, and Tel Aviv LGBT (TLV Fest) among many others. Her three Short films, Letter to My Mother, Out of Frame and Where Is the Friend´s Home? have been part of the Frauen Film Festival Dortmund-Köln and Museum Ostwalll in 2022. Her creative work explores childhood memories, mental health, and self-realization with a mission to amplify trans and queer storylines. Her first directorial debüt feature has been part of Berlinale Dok Station Lab in 2023, Fid Lab Marseille, Close Up Initiative, Baltic Sea Docs forum, and Dok Fest München forum in 2022. She has a BA in filmmaking and an MA in film directing from Film University Babelsberg in Germany.
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