Maryam Tafakory

Maryam Tafakory (born and raised in Iran) works with film and performance. She teaches on the MA Fine Art program at the University of Oxford’s Ruskin School of Art and holds a PhD from Kingston University, London.

She received the 2024 Film London Jarman Award, and her work has been presented in solo screenings at MoMA (New York), BOZAR (Brussels), the National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.), and the Academy Museum (Los Angeles), among others. Her first U.K. solo exhibition was one of Artforum’s Critics’ Picks of 2023.

Her films have received numerous awards, several of them Oscar-qualifying, including the Gold Hugo at the 58th Chicago International Film Festival, Best Documentary Short at the 72nd Melbourne International Film Festival, the Tiger Short Award at the 51st International Film Festival Rotterdam, and the Cinema & Gioventù award at the 77th Locarno Film Festival, among others. They have also screened at NYFF (New York), TIFF (Toronto), BFI London Film Festival, and Cannes Directors' Fortnight.

At the Institute, Tafakory will be developing her debut feature film Hospital of Irremediable Desires, alongside Gol[e] Sorkh—an ongoing project emerging from four years of research into illicit desires, queer disappearances, and women’s involvement in Iran’s clandestine revolutionary movements of the 1970s, unfolding across a series of films and performances.