Synopsis
Ghezal is 20. She has a tangible difference with the other girls of her age. She tries to live in harmony with her classmates at school and her family at home, despite her difference. Quite a challenge when you are only 70 centimeters tall.
Rewards, festivals and diffusions
Shahrbanoo Sadat
Director and producer
Born in Tehran in 1990, Shahrbanoo Sadat spent her childhood in Iran before moving to her parents' native village in Afghanistan en 2001, after the fall of the taliban regime. Refusing an arranged marriage, she convinced her father and local authorities to enroll her in a boys' school. At 18, she left her village for Kabul, where a registration error led her to study cinema at Kabul University. After a year, she left her studies and worked for the Tolo TV channel.
In 2009, she attended a documentary filmmaking workshop with Ateliers Varan in Kabul where she directed her first short documentary film, A smile for life.
In 2011, her first fiction short film, Vice Versa One, is selected for the Directors' Fortnight at Cannes. In 2013, she founded her own production company in Kabul and co-directed Not At Home, a film selected for the Rotterdam Film Festival.
As the first female director from Afghanistan, she became the youngest ever selected for the Cinéfondation residency at Cannes, where she began writing Wolf and Sheep. This film, inspired by her adolescence in Afghanistan, won the Art et Cinéma CICAE award at the Directors' Fortnight in 2016.
In 2019, her second film, The Orphanage, was also presented at Cannes' Directors' Fortnight, before being released in theaters that same year.
The return to power of the Taliban on August 15, 2021, forced her to flee her country and seek exile in Germany.
In 2026, her third feature film, No Good Men, is the opening film at the prestigious festival La Berlinale.
Ask Us
Questions about our training courses? Please contact us 01 43 56 64 04
6, impasse de Mont Louis
75011 Paris
