Biography

Roqiye Tavakoli was born in 1985, in Yazd, Iran. At age 18, she was accepted at Sooreh, an art university in Tehran. From this university, she received both her bachelor in Cinema and her Master's in dramatic literature, in 2009 and 2011 respectively. She started her career when she was a university student with directing short movies. "Water", "Nothing Else" and "Saba" are some examples of these formative years. They were met critical success and brought her several awards from different film festivals e.g. Kin Film Festival, Parvin Festival and Golf International Film Festival, a foreshadow of her promising future. Since then, she has made 30 short movies and has appeared on selection committees and Juries in several film festivals.

Roqiye's career is intertwined with women and their everyday problems. This theme can be traced in her first feature movie, Mothering (2017). Golnar encounters some problems in her marriage life. Her sister, Nava, tries her best to save her marriage while searching for her own boyfriend, Kaveh. This movie portrays middle class women, zooming on the concept of love and motherhood. "Hanged" (2019) follows similar theme, but from another perspective. This 13-minute short movie focuses on the life of Parvaneh. Shattering the traditional image of hangman, this 40-year-old girl executes female criminals in today's Iran.

Furthermore, Roqiye likes to provide her audience with the opportunity of looking at life through the lens of children. Mehran (2019), her second feature movie, is produced to meet this target. Mehran is a young adolescent whose father has left him to attend the Iran-Iraq war. In the father's absence, this young man attempts to find a suitable wife for him. The way that he sees life and the way that others respond to him attract both the audience's and critics' attention.
- IMDb mini biography by: Roqiye Tavakoli