The 15th edition of the Iran International Documentary Film Festival also known as “Cinema Verite" have announced the jury members of full-length competition sections.

The jury members are as follows: 

Dr. Mohammad Shahba / Iran

Graduated: PhD in Cinema (Film Narrative) from the UK. Shahba has published many translated and authored articles in film magazines and more than fifty translated and authored books in the fields of cinema, theater, television, and translation studies. The most important books translated and written by him are: Patterns of expanding the screenplay to the TV series, The Social History of Iranian Cinema (Hamid Nafisi), The Book of the Year of Iranian Cinema 2015, Different Screenwriting (Ken Densiger and Jeff Rush) Nominated for the Book of the Year of Iranian Cinema 2015 The film›s field (Warren Buckland), narratology (Gerald Prince), narratives and narrators (Gregory Corey), etc.

Responsibilities: He is a member of the Faculty of Cinema and Theater of the University of Arts and a visiting professor at several foreign universities and works in the field of teaching cinema, screenwriting, filmmaking and television programming.

Writer and translator, screenwriter, editor and professor of Tehran University of Arts (Faculty of Cinema and Theater),

Dr. Mohammad Shahba, in addition to his professional work in the field of film editing, writing screenplays for the seventh contact (Shahriar Parsipour,2003), Hosseinieh Raisian (Alireza, Tehran) (2007), and has been in charge of the TV series of group 23 (Mehdi Jafari, 2006).

Maria Giovanna Vagenas/ Italy

Graduated: Doctoral degree in Cinema Studies.

Vagenas is a Greece-Italian film critic and curator.

After a Master degree in Philosophy (University of Genova-Italy) and a second Master degree in Comparative literature (University of Vienna-Austria) Maria Giovanna Vagenas completed her studies with a Doctoral degree in Cinema Studies at the University of Sorbonne in Paris. She has worked for the Berlinale, the IFFR and the Doha Film Institute. She collaborates for the Viennale (Austria) as curator and is a programmer for of Locarno International Film Festival (Switzerland). As a film critic she has been working for the South China Morning Post

(Daily Hong Kong) Schermaglie.it and Cinepivates.gr. She is currently writing for Senses of Cinema.

Andre Hörmann/ Germany 

Hörmann works in Munich and LA. He studied political science at Humboldt University, Berlin, directing at Film University, Potsdam and graduated of Professionals Program in Screenwriting at UCLA, Los Angeles. His films have been shown and awarded at many prestigious international festivals such as Sundance, IDFA, DOK Leipzig, Hiroshima Int. Animation Festival, DocNYC, Chicago International Film Festival, Palm Springs Short fest, TIFF Toronto, IFFK Krakow. He teaches Film at Film University Potsdam, Universities of Ulm and Marburg, Facets Chicago, Whistling Woods Mumbai and works as a director, producer and writer in LA, Munich and Berlin. His last Documentary Ringside premiered at Berlinale, Section Generation +14 and released in the US on Showtime.

He just finished his first Live Action Feature Night Forest.

Opened in Tehran on Dec 9, the festival is slated to be wraped up on Dec 16, 2021.

The Documentary and Experimental Film Centre (DEFC) organizes the annual Iran International Documentary Film Festival.

The festival has several sections including National, International, Martyr Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani Award, Martyr Avini Prize, Special Screenings, Portrait, Mirror of a festival, Focus on a country, Panorama, Workshop, and Doc Market.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the major Iranian international festival for documentary films are being held with a limited number of guests and audience at Tehran’s Charsu Cineplex.