Golshifteh Farahani, Jury President of the 51^st Deauville Film Festival

“There’s no mar­ble in me, not even water, hard­ly any gas”.

Is it the heav­i­ness of the world, the prox­im­i­ty of death, the tri­als of exile, or a very per­son­al pan­the­ism that has giv­en Gol­shifteh Fara­hani this pre­cious gift of light­ness, this pre­cious val­ue praised by the great Ital­ian nov­el­ist Ita­lo Calvi­no in his “Amer­i­can Lessons”?

Child prodi­gy of Iran­ian cin­e­ma, tal­ent­ed musi­cian, pas­sion­ate the­ater-enthu­si­ast, she was revealed at a very young age in Dar­iush Mehrjui’s Le Poiri­er, and went on to make some 20 films in the course of a decade. Her first major role on the inter­na­tion­al scene in 2009 was in Asghar Farhadi’s About Elly. 

Para­dox­i­cal evanes­cence from an actress who always embod­ies, resists and exudes aplomb, dig­ni­ty and strength, com­mit­ting her whole being.

Refus­ing to sub­mit to the restric­tions imposed on women, she exiled her­self after film­ing with­out a hijab, along­side Leonar­do DiCaprio, in Rid­ley Scot­t’s Lies of State (2008), becom­ing the first Iran­ian actress to star in a Hol­ly­wood pro­duc­tion since the 1979 Rev­o­lu­tion. An act of free­dom that led to her ban­ish­ment from her native country.

She then moved to France, where she pur­sued a pro­lif­ic career, alter­nat­ing between auteur films and inter­na­tion­al pro­duc­tions. In Atiq Rahim­i’s Syn­gué sabour — Pierre de patience (2008), based on a screen­play by Jean-Claude Car­rière, she reclaims her body as a sub­mis­sive wife and earns a César nom­i­na­tion for Best New Actress; in 2016, she is Anna Karé­nine on stage and impos­es a pres­ence that is both radi­ant and com­bat­ive in Jim Jar­musch’s Paterson.

With one foot in the U.S. and one foot else­where, each of her appear­ances makes its mark on view­ers with its free­dom and inde­pen­dence: she leaves it all behind in her Amer­i­can road trip Just Like a Woman direct­ed by Rachid Bouchareb; she’s a school­teacher prey to the patri­ar­chal world in Hin­er Saleem’s My Sweet Pep­per Land (2013) and even a Kur­dish fight­er in Eva Hus­son’s Les Filles du soleil (2018); we also dis­cov­er her as a shaven-head­ed sea witch in Pirates of the Caribbean: Salazar’s Revenge (2017) by Joachim Røn­ning, Espen Sand­berg and an excep­tion­al woman of action in Sam Har­grave’s Tyler Rake (2020).

In 2020, Manele Labidi’s Un divan à Tunis, she slipped into the role of a stub­born psy­cho­an­a­lyst to reveal a tal­ent that had been some­what neglect­ed in her palette: com­e­dy. In the inter­na­tion­al TV series Inva­sion, she takes on the role of a coura­geous young moth­er, while in the recent adap­ta­tion of the best­seller “Read­ing Loli­ta in Teheran”, she bril­liant­ly express­es the extent to which wom­en’s bod­ies were the first vic­tims of the Iran­ian Rev­o­lu­tion. This year, she will be in the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val Com­pe­ti­tion in Julia Ducour­nau’s Alpha.

Gol­shifteh Fara­hani has embraced so many caus­es and so many dar­ing fig­ures on screen that she has become a sym­bol and stan­dard-bear­er for wom­en’s free­dom, but it’s body and soul that she plays out her life with inten­si­ty every day.

A cross-dress­ing child who braved the mul­lahs’ law on her bicy­cle to live her life, an artist in exile, a rebel pos­ing naked to shout out her rage at being locked up, she con­tin­ues to be active­ly involved in the wom­en’s rights move­ment in Iran, notably dur­ing the demon­stra­tions linked to the death of Mah­sa Amini.

The Deauville Film Fes­ti­val is extreme­ly proud to wel­come her as Pres­i­dent of the Jury for its 51^st edition.

The best of Amer­i­can cin­e­ma awaits you…from Sep­tem­ber 5 to 14!

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