Filmmakers & Photographers
Rakhshan Banietemad
Rakhshan Banietemad is an Iranian director, producer, documentary maker, screenwriter and a board member of the Academy Awards. Her films have been praised at national and international festivals, including Tales Best Screenplay award Venice, 2014. The Blue Veiled FIPRESCI award 36th Thessaloniki Festival, was nominated for Golden Leopard and received the Bronze Leopard award at Locarno. Under the Skin of the City Audience, & best foreign language feature film Turin 2001. Our Times Netpac Award and Locarno 2002 special prize. Touran Khanom, is her recent collaboration with Mojtaba Mirtahmasb.
Rafi Behroozian
Rafi Behroozian was born in Herat. Founder of Daft Cultural Centre, he is active in the fields of music, cinema and TV and has published several music albums. He co-directed, with Alka Sadat, Eye (I) Witness documentary. Bamian, Land of Light is one of his leading documentary works.
Massoud Hossaini
Massoud Hossaini is a recipient of the Pulitzer prize for his picture of the explosion in Kabul on Ashura day in 2011; the first for AFP. He learned photographic techniques at Aina Cultural Centre and worked with Agence France Press for many years, as well as with Associated Press. He has also received many other awards including World Press best photo of the year.
Mojtaba Mirtahmasb
Mojtaba Mirtahmasb is an Iranian documentary and feature filmmaker and sound recorder. He graduated in Handicraft from Arts University. His works include assistance in the Game of the Prominent People, and sound recording in Hello Cinema and Gabbeh. He has made several short and long documentaries and eight parts of Stories of India. He is an advisor to a documentaries series on Iranian entrepreneurs and worked with Jafar Panahi in This is not a film documentary. Touran Khanom, is his recent collaboration with Rakhshan Banietemd.
Daniele Rugo
Daniele Rugo is an award winning filmmaker and Reader in Film at Brunel University London and currently a Visiting Professor at Sciences Po, Middle East Campus. His work focuses on conflict and sustainable peace. About a War is his latest feature documentary. He is the author of three books and several journal articles. He is an affiliate of the Centre for Lebanese Studies in Beirut and has been an associate of the American University of Beirut.
Alka Sadat
Alka Sadat is an Afghan filmmaker, documentary producer, director and camerawoman. She graduated in documentary filmmaking in Italy and is currently deputy president of Roya Film House. Most of her films focus on women and human rights. She has made more than 15 documentaries and has won Afghanistan’s peace prize for the short film No. 1 and other prizes in Algiers, Egypt, Italy, the US, India, Bahrain and Kabul Human Rights festivals. She co-directed, with Rafi Behroozian, Eye (I) Witness documentary.
Diana Saqeb Jamal
Diana Saqeb Jamal is a young Afghan filmmaker. She graduated in Cinema from Tehran University and is a member of BASA artistic group and chief editor of Theme film magazine. She has made several documentaries, including: 25 percent, Mohtarama together with Malek Shafiei, Run Roumina, all of which focus on women and their grievances. Her other documentary Afghanistan; Unveiling a Never-Ending Tale narrates 15 years of Afghanistan’s political life after 2001.
Orzumurod Sharipov
Orzumurod Sharipov was born in Dushanbe. His films have been shown at film festivals including Leipzig, Amsterdam, Paris, San Francisco, Munich, Prague, Portugal, Glasgow, Canada, Gyor, Budapest, Seoul, New York, & Berlin. Grand prize at the 3rd International Eurasian Television Forum, Moscow (2000). His documentary The Shell was shown in the Input Festival New York & PSBT’s ‘Open Frame’, New Delhi. His film 11 000 km far from New York is listed among 50 great avant-garde films of the last decade.
Abi Weaver
Abi Weaver an award winning producer/director & affiliate of the Centre for Lebanese Studies at LAU Beirut, has worked across a range of visual media: independent feature documentaries, online shorts, programming for major UK broadcasters . Her latest About a War explores violence & social change through testimonies of ex-fighters from the Lebanese Civil War. Abi is also a University of Surrey TECHNE researcher working on the voice in the filmed documentary interview through the lens of Levinasian philosophy.
ARTISTS & POETS
Rooholamin Amini
Rooholamin Amini, born 1982 in Herat, is a poet and writer. Six poetry books of his have been published. He has worked as a journalist with domestic and foreign press and is currently deputy director of Armanshahr Foundation and heads Armanshahr Publishing
Patrick NAVAÏ
Patrick Navaï is a Franco-Iranian painter, writer and poet. A citizen of the world, he has made travel & migration his main theme. Medal-holder of the City of Paris, his art work is present at the MAHHSA, the Musée de La Poste, the Musée International d’Art Naïf Anatole Jakovski, the Musée de la Fabuloserie and the Art et Déchirure, Musée d’Art Singulier. His illustrated collections have been published by various publishers including Carnets-Livres, Le Verbe & L’Empreinte, Voix Tissées.
PARTAW NADERI
Partaw Naderi is regarded as one of Afghanistan's leading contemporary poets. He is widely published and has seven collections of poetry, an anthology of classical Persian poetry, several books of literary theory, a Panorama of Afghan Media, as well as biographies of Roumi and Roudaki. Born in a small village in Badakhshan, a mountainous and northern province where some of the adventures of Ferdowsi’s "Book of Kings", the great Persian national epic whose echoes can sometimes be heard in Naderi's poetry, take place.
SPEAKERS
ALI DEHBASHI
Ali Dehbashi is an Iranian journalist, Iranologist, researcher and writer. He is also a member of Societas Iranologica Europaea (European Iranian Studies Society). Dehbashi, is the editor-in-chief of Bukhara magazine of culture, literature and Iranology recently issuing its 140th edition. He has held nearly 600 "Bukhara Nights" honoring the great figures of culture, literature and arts.
Dr. Naji El Khatib
Dr. Naji El Khatib is a Palestinian social scientist, writer and activist. The Plurality of Thought Versus the Monolithic Obscurantism, Omagate edition, is one of his most recent books. He is a researcher at Medfil Humanities Institute, France-Palestine and a former university lecturer at Consortium des Universités Euro-Méditerranéennes in Italy and assistant professor at An-Najah National University-Nablus in Palestine.
Farhad Golyardi
Farhad Golyardi is a sociologist and co-founder of the Eutopia Institute, a transnational gathering place for thinkers and writers who are concerned with the Middle East, culture and diversity, among other things.
Guissou Jahangiri
Guissou Jahangiri , FIDH Vice-President & OPEN ASIA|Armanshahr Executive Director, studied political sociology & is a life-time committed feminist, human rights defender, peace & cultural activist. She worked 15 years as a journalist for Courrier International & spent 5 years in Tajikistan during the civil war as HRW researcher & acting head of UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. In 2006, she founded Armanshahr Foundation & Publishing House in Afghanistan, created the Simorgh International Peace Prize & Women’s Film Festival-Herat.
Dr. Azadeh KIAN
Dr. Azadeh KIAN is a Professor of sociology, director of the Centre for Teaching, Documentation and Research in Women’s Studies (CEDREF) and Director of Les Cahiers du CEDREF journal. She is also the co-director of the Master’s degree in Gender & Social & Political Change: Transnational Perspectives and a researcher at the LCSP at the University of Paris. Among her most recent publications: Women and Power in Islam, Paris, Michalon, 2019.
Dr Sayed Askar Mousavi
Dr Sayed Askar Mousavi is a professor, writer and novelist. He was educated at the University of East Anglia (BA Development Studies 1987) and St Antony’s College, Oxford (MLitt; PhD). He is the author of The Hazaras of Afghanistan published in 2009 by Cambridge University, considered a classic on the topic. Dr. Mousavi is a former Chief Advisor to the Minister of Higher Education of Afghanistan.
Dr. Sayed Noureddin Alawi
Dr. Sayed Noureddin Alawi is a sociology researcher and professor at Kabul University and President of the Sociology Society of Afghanistan. His studies, research, and teaching are multiple and include political sociology, philosophy of social sciences and history of philosophy. His work has focused on gender and development, cultural theory, education, knowledge, schools of sociology and sociology of social inequalities. Many works of his have been published.
Ilya Nuzov
Ilya Nuzov is the Head of Eastern Europe and Central Asia Desk for the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH). Previously, he was Legal Advisor at the International Center for Transitional Justice. He is a former Teaching Assistant and Researcher at the Geneva Academy of IHL and Human Rights, where he also earned his LLM. He is a lawyer admitted to the New York bar.
Dr. Neelam Raina
Dr. Neelam Raina has a BA in History, an MA in Design, Manufacture & Textiles and a PhD in Design & Development. Professor of Design & Development at Middlesex University London. Her research explores the links between culture, conflict, poverty & development. Her doctoral research analysed this from the perspective of Muslim women in post-conflict Kashmir. She is the Challenge leader for Security, Protracted Conflict, Refugees and Displacement at the Global Challenges Research Fund UK Research and Innovation.
Dr. Muborak Sharipova
Dr. Muborak Sharipova is a peace activist and analyst in Post-Soviet socio-political, historical & cultural matters. She is the co-founder of OPEN ASIA & has worked in Africa & Asia. She has authored scientific articles and carried out sociological surveys notably a ground-breaking national study on VAW and VACH in Tajikistan. She is a former lecturer at the Tajik Pedagogical University and director of Sociology department of the Tajik Aluminium Plant. She collaborated with the Danish National Research Centre for the Working Environment.
Debbie Stothard
Debbie Stothard worked through 1981-1996 as a crime reporter, student organizer, policy analyst, academic, government advisor & food caterer in Malaysia & Australia while volunteering for human rights causes. Since 1996 when she founded ALTSEAN-Burma she is focused on the thematic priorities of business and human rights, atrocity prevention, and women’s leadership in Asia & beyond. She served on the board of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) for nine years (2013-2019) as Deputy Secretary General and then Secretary General.
Dr. Nahid Tavassoli
Dr. Nahid Tavassoli has a PhD in Ancient Languages and Culture, is a researcher and women's rights activist, licensee and chief editor of NAFEH (Letter of Literature Culture Arts) journal since 2000, a CC member of the Women Journalists Association of Iran and a member of “Mothers for Peace” forum in Iran. Her writings include Miss Agni, an 8-story anthology on women, and Why women have sinister dreams, a collection of pre-2004 articles, lectures and interviews.
TRAINERS
Mohammad Ebrahim Dariush
Mohammad Ebrahim Dariush has a Master’s degree in sociology, is a research fellow and lecturer at Rana University. He has published two books; An introduction to women’s movement in post-Taleban Afghanistan and Implementation of transitional justice in Afghanistan; a case study of Kabul. His essays include “Typology of identity of women’s movement in post-Taleban Afghanistan”, “Opposition in the women’s movement in post-Taleban Afghanistan” and “Social goals of the women’s movement in post-Taleban Afghanistan.”
Davood Erfan
Davood Erfan is a political science PhD student, university lecturer & researcher in social and political fields. He has conducted research in political development, political sociology, political culture, urban and regional security, and international relations. His doctoral dissertation thesis is titled: “Identity-generating elements in the political thought of the Herat School.”
Manija Ramezi
Manija Ramezi has an MA in Education Management, is a Kabul University professor at School of Psychology &, director of Social Workers Centre. As a HR activist she is a member of Secretariat of the Joint Working Group of Civil Society Institutions and Civil Society and Human Rights Activists Network, Executive Director of White Movement, and a co-founder of Economic and Legal Studies Institute of Afghanistan and Social Workers Group. She co-authored Human Rights Knowledge for Social Workers and Election Guidelines for Young Candidates.
TEAM members
Janet Foyle
Janet Foyle, Vice President of OPEN ASIA, is a IHL and human rights law lawyer. She currently works as Advocacy Officer for Médecins du Monde (Canada) based in Montréal. Her professional background includes work as legal advisor for the International Committee of the Red Cross and missions as an ICRC field delegate, as well as work focused on the rights of persons deprived of their liberty for the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies.
Alessandro ESKANDAR Hatami
Alessandro Hatami, Vice President of OPEN ASIA, is the founder of Pacemakers.io, specialising in digital transformation in banking. He was a senior executive at PayPal, Lloyds Banking Group, PayPoint & GE Capital. He is a well-known expert in innovation, a published writer and frequent public speaker. He also worked in infrastructure & development in West Africa & Central Europe. Alessandro speaks five languages, is of mixed Italian/Iranian heritage & lives in London. His latest book Reinventing Banking and Finance was published in 2020.
Niki Konstantinoudou
Niki Konstantinoudou, member of the advisory boardof OPEN ASIA, is a Lawyer, linguist, author and screenwriter. She is the author of Just One Slap? (Juste Une Gifle?’) on gender-based violence in France, written under pen name Katya Stiletti and a cyberpunk novella called Amaranthine Historica written under the pen name O. Lemniscate. Her latest completed feature-length legal-political thriller covers themes relating to justice, freedom of the press, and freedom in general.
David Knaute
David Knaute is a humanitarian worker, human rights activist and anthropologist, with a long-lasting passion for Afghanistan where he has travelled and worked since 2004. His PhD thesis was on Pakistan’s Zoroastrian community. David has been program manager, country director and consultant for various NGOs, UN agencies and the ICRC in Africa, Asia, the Near-East and the Caribbean. In 2014, he became an OPEN ASIA|Armanshahr board member and was recently nominated as President of the organization. His dream? An eco-friendly world of peace and harmony for tomorrow’s children.
Adrien Cyrus Moayer
Adrien Cyrus Moayer is an anti-imperialist activist, and a Geopolitical Analyst and Program Associate at OPEN ASIA | Armanshahr. He holds a BA in Political & Religious Anthropology, a BA in History, and a MA in International Relations. An holistic analytical framework drives his interests towards the observation of grassroot social movements, class conflicts, state violence, dynamics of information warfare, the critique of imperialism and of the military industrial complex, phenomena of ideological radicalization, resistant art & media, as well as the manifestation of all of the above on digital spaces.
Khalil Rostamkhani
Khalil Rostamkhani is an Iranian writer, translator, researcher, and editor; honorary member of the US PEN, PEN Canada & a fellow-traveller of PEN Germany; and human rights defender. His published works include among others: 12 books translated into Persian or English, editor of 8 anthologies in Persian/ English; selections of poetry (English/German); a story and a selection of Prison Letters (German); author of numerous research papers, pamphlets and articles in English and Persian; translated pamphlets and articles; editor of several journals – Persian/ English.
Kyra Wigard
Kyra Wigard is a PhD researcher at KU Leuven. She obtained a Master of Law (LLM) in Legal Philosophy and one in Public International Law at Leiden University (2017) and studied at the University of Oxford and Sciences Po Paris. She also holds a BA in English Language and Culture from Leiden University. She held positions as a Delegate for the International Federation for Human Rights’ (FIDH) Permanent Representation to the International Criminal Court and is a Legal Fellow for OPEN ASIA| Armanshahr Foundation.