Maryam Keshavarz

Maryam Keshavarz is an Iranian-American queer filmmaker known for Circumstance (Sharayet, 2011), which depicts the forbidden romance between two young women in contemporary Tehran and won the Audience Award at Sundance. The film was Iran's most watched bootleg film of the year, reaching audiences who were denied any official access to stories about queer desire. Keshavarz has spoken about making films for and about communities whose lives are criminalized and about the power of storytelling as resistance.