Ziba Karamali

Biography: She graduated from Tehran University of Art in 2020, and she is one of the very few Iranian students that has been attracted by professionals in the film industry of Iran while studying. She ranked 8 among 150,000 participants in the Iranian Konkur (national university entrance exam) in 2015, and since that time she is a member of Iran's National Elite Foundation. Among Iranian public audiences, she is mostly known because of her act as the leading actress in Lottery 2018- a film that not only got the attention of the film reviewers and juries but also holds the record of the most sale in the Fajr Film Festival (the most prestigious film festival in Iran) for all the time. Even though she has started her acting career successfully, she doesn't want to leave her main point of interest, telling remarkable stories about her society as a filmmaker. She's directed Barter in 2020 with Emad Arad. They met each other in a short project finding that they have a lot of common social concerns, as well as common sense about their artistic visions which lead them to cooperate in the Barter as their first film. A film that is the result of their intense social concerns representing complicated aspects of family relationships.