Storytelling has shaped my life for as long as I can remember. Growing up in Tehran in a filmmaking family, cameras and production meetings were part of everyday life. My family established Bina Film in Iran in the early 1990s, producing animation, television programmes and commercials at a time when the country's independent animation industry was beginning to grow. Watching stories take shape through collaboration sparked a lifelong fascination with cinema—not only as a creative practice, but as a way of understanding people, cultures and societies.

Although filmmaking has always been at the centre of my life, I have never seen practice and scholarship as separate pursuits. My career has been driven by a desire to understand cinema from both perspectives: making films while researching the cultural, historical and political contexts in which they are produced. This dialogue between practice and research continues to shape everything I do.

In 2001 I moved to Canada, where I studied Film Studies at Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson University). During this time I explored every stage of the filmmaking process, from writing and directing to cinematography and sound, but it was in the editing room that I found the aspect of filmmaking that resonated with me most. Editing became the place where narrative, rhythm and emotion came together, and it remains the creative process I enjoy most.


My filmmaking has increasingly focused on documentary, editing and collaborative practice. Alongside directing and editing independent productions, I have developed research films that communicate academic projects to wider audiences and have led community filmmaking initiatives that use cinema as a tool for participation, dialogue and social engagement. Projects such as FREE (Filmmaking with Refugees) and the international Art Beats Festival reflect my belief that filmmaking can create spaces where people from different backgrounds come together to tell stories, exchange perspectives and build meaningful connections.

In 2020 I established Bina Film UK, continuing the legacy of my family's original production company while creating a new platform for my own work. The company brings together filmmaking, editing, research and education, supporting projects that range from documentaries and fiction films to research collaborations and creative partnerships. Although rooted in a family tradition that spans decades, Bina Film UK represents a new chapter—one that embraces international collaboration, interdisciplinary practice and emerging forms of storytelling.

Whether I am directing fiction or documentary, editing feature films, supervising student productions or writing about cinema, I remain interested in the same fundamental question: how moving images shape the ways we understand and imagine our world, and how they influence the ways we relate to one another. For me, filmmaking and research are not separate careers but complementary ways of exploring that question, each continually enriching the other.

My interest in visual culture later led me to complete an MA in Photographic Preservation and Collection Management, a joint programme between Toronto Metropolitan University and the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, New York. Working with photographic archives deepened my understanding of images as historical documents and strengthened my interest in memory, representation and visual storytelling—themes that continue to inform both my academic research and filmmaking.

In 2007 I moved to the United Kingdom to undertake a PhD in Film Studies at the University of Edinburgh. My doctoral research examined the representation of women in Iranian cinema, laying the foundation for much of my subsequent research. Since then, my work has explored Iranian and Middle Eastern cinemas, transnational filmmaking, documentary, women's cinema, and film as a form of cultural dialogue. Alongside my academic publications, I have continued to make films, recognising that creative practice often offers different ways of asking—and answering—the same questions that drive my research.

After teaching at the University of St Andrews, I joined Lancaster University, where I am now an Associate Professor in Film Studies. My teaching spans both film theory and filmmaking practice, and I particularly enjoy helping students discover their own creative voices while developing the critical skills to understand cinema within its wider social, political and cultural contexts.