Noora Niasari

Noora Niasari (Persian نورا نیاسری; born 1989), sometimes formerly spelt Nora Niasari, is an Iranian-Australian film director based in Melbourne. She has made many short documentary and narrative films, and is best known for her debut feature film, Shayda, released in 2023. She is a co-founder of Parandeh Pictures.

Early life and education Noora Niasari was born in Tehran, Iran, in 1989. Her family emigrated to Brisbane when she was young and she was raised in Australia. One of Niasari's earliest memories from her childhood was her time spent living in a women's shelter in Australia. Her mother left an abusive relationship and the persecution of the Islamic Republic to try and better her and her daughters' lives. Noora spent eight months there, aged five. Her mother introduced her to films by Iranian filmmakers such as Abbas Kiarostami's Where Is the Friend's House? and Jafar Panahi's The White Balloon when she was a child, which sparked an interest in cinema and informed her about life in Iran. She has said that she is grateful for her architectural education, as it "informs so much of how I write, in terms of moving through space, how it influences us and creates a narrative structure".

In 2014, as a student at the VCA, Niasari made the short film Simorgh (The Phoenix), has as its subject Manouchehr Farid, a well-known actor in Iran who featured in films directed by Bahram Beyzai such as the 1972 film Downpour. The film screened at many Australian and international film festivals in 2015, including the 64th Melbourne International Film Festival (in the Accelerator program for emerging directors), the 14th Dhaka International Film Festival,

Niasari's mother had introduced her to Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami's films when she was a child, which sparked an interest in cinema. Years later, in 2015, she studied under Kiarostami in a filmmaking workshop in Barcelona, Spain. documentary film as writer and director. It was selected for screening in the 2017 Sheffield DocFest, where she earned a nomination for the New Talent Award. It had its world premiere at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Audience Award in the World Dramatic Competition. It was also selected as Australia's official submission for Best International Feature Film at the 96th Academy Awards.

Niasari has been working on a second narrative feature, Raya. The film is based on a book of the same name by Mahsa Rahmani Noble, a work of historical fiction about Soraya Esfandiary-Bakhtiary, the second wife of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Queen of Iran from 1951 to 1958.

she is based in Castlemaine, Victoria. which co-produced Shayda. She founded the company in order "to champion cross-cultural and regional narratives". 2023: Winner, Sundance Film Festival Audience Award for Shayda 2023: Winner, Australian Directors' Guild Awards, Best Direction in a Feature Film (Budget $1m or over) 2023: Nominated, Directors Guild of America Award, Outstanding Directing – First-Time Feature Film for Shayda 2023: Winner, CinefestOZ Film Prize for Shayda, worth $100,000 2024: Winner, Film Critics Circle of Australia Award (FCCA) for best screenplay for Shayda 2024: Shayda submitted as Australia's official entry for Best International Feature Film at the 96th Academy Awards

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