Tanaz Eshaghian
Encyclopedia
Tanaz Eshaghian is an Iranian-American documentary filmmaker.
Eshaghian, who left Iran with her mother at age 6, grew up in New York, went to Trinity School and graduated from Brown University in 1996 with a BA in Semiotics.
For her début feature-length film "Be Like Others," a provocative look at men in Iran choosing to undergo sex change surgery, Eshaghian returned to Iran for the first time in 25 years.
"Be Like Others", a BBC 2, France 5, ITVS production, premiered at the 2008 Sundance film festival and went on to win the Teddy special jury prize at the Berlin Film Festival as well as the ELSE Siegessaule Reader's Choice Award and was nominated for and Emmy award. It has been invited to over 30 film festivals worldwide and had its US television premiere on HBO in June 2009.
Currently she finished a documentary film inside a women's prison in Kabul Afghanistan focusing on "moral crimes" for HBO.
Her first film "I Call Myself Persian," completed in 2002, told the story of how Iranians living in the U.S. were affected by prejudice and xenophobia after 9/11. In "Love Iranian-American Style," completed in 2006, she filmed her traditional Iranian family, both in New York and Los Angeles, documenting their obsession with marrying her off and her own cultural ambivalence.
Eshaghian's films have also screened at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and at the Walter Reade cinema at Lincoln Center.
She currently lives between Paris and New York.
Eshaghian, who left Iran with her mother at age 6, grew up in New York, went to Trinity School and graduated from Brown University in 1996 with a BA in Semiotics.
For her début feature-length film "Be Like Others," a provocative look at men in Iran choosing to undergo sex change surgery, Eshaghian returned to Iran for the first time in 25 years.
"Be Like Others", a BBC 2, France 5, ITVS production, premiered at the 2008 Sundance film festival and went on to win the Teddy special jury prize at the Berlin Film Festival as well as the ELSE Siegessaule Reader's Choice Award and was nominated for and Emmy award. It has been invited to over 30 film festivals worldwide and had its US television premiere on HBO in June 2009.
Currently she finished a documentary film inside a women's prison in Kabul Afghanistan focusing on "moral crimes" for HBO.
Her first film "I Call Myself Persian," completed in 2002, told the story of how Iranians living in the U.S. were affected by prejudice and xenophobia after 9/11. In "Love Iranian-American Style," completed in 2006, she filmed her traditional Iranian family, both in New York and Los Angeles, documenting their obsession with marrying her off and her own cultural ambivalence.
Eshaghian's films have also screened at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and at the Walter Reade cinema at Lincoln Center.
She currently lives between Paris and New York.