...And Cut: An In-Depth Piece on a History-Making Director

"You can’t get into the film industry without the uniform. To get the uniform, you need to be a filmmaker. And to be a filmmaker, you have to make films"

Iranian writer and film director Dornaz Hajiha tells Cristina Sandu her story.

Dornaz Hajiha, Michel Franco and Geoffrey Rush, photographed by Chris Nemes for TIFF Romania.

At first, Dornaz Hajiha didn't realise her wish had come true. Full of hope and dreams, she remained in her seat while hearing her name called on stage. Emotions came in waves as she walked towards the stage, discovering that she had won the Best Director award at one of the most important film festivals in the world.

And that's how she made history: she was the first female director to win the Transilvania Trophy at the Transilvania International Film Festival. Also, Sepidar Tari, one of the protagonists from Like a Fish on the Moon, won the festival's best performance award.

Like a Fish on the Moon (2022) was screened at other film festivals for over a year until Dornaz made history. A female director did not win the Transilvania Trophy, the top prize at the Transilvania International Film Festival, until 2023.

"Geoffrey Rush and Michel Franco gave me the award. I didn't know I was the first female director to win this award. After the ceremony, I discovered that I made history," she recalls when she met Oscar-winning actor Geoffrey Rush and Mexican film director Michel Franco.

"What is normality?" asks Dornaz while discussing Like a Fish on the Moon. This family drama is based on emotions. When your child suddenly stops talking, these emotions appear, and you must adapt to this unique situation.

When writing another script, the concept of Like a Fish on the Moon came unexpectedly, so she took the chance to make history with it. "I was inspired by my childhood when my family wanted to teach me to be in a box. We need to be in a box to be accepted by our society. But how do you get the approval to be accepted by the majority?" she says.

Initially, her first feature film was supposed to be called Woman, Man, Child, but the final name chosen by the film's sales company impressed Dornaz because it "tells a lot about the child's feelings," she adds. Moreover, after auditioning over 800 children, she finally found the one who could transmit the emotion essential for her film's narrative depth.

Regarding casting the actors, passion and trust are essential elements for someone who "kills the actors in a good way," she says."My actors didn't know the story because I didn't give them the whole script at the beginning of those nine months of rehearsing. Also, they weren't professional actors."

Painting by Dornaz Hajiha.

Scriptwriting is essential for Dornaz, so her approach to stories, messages, and themes is somehow unique. "I make films to bring to life the characters I have in my head and to tell their truth. I can say that in some of my films, violence is the main theme. The violence I am talking about is not physical. It is emotional abuse," she says.

While other film directors would call it an atypical way of directing, Dornaz follows along the story of Like a Fish on the Moon as the script is written to get the best out of it. "I directed this film in a specific way because the way I like to direct my story is not normal. I want to shoot every scene precisely as it happens in the script," she says. "My main challenge was to do the film chronologically."

The intense emotional participation of her audience is inevitable because Dornaz wants people to be silent and thoughtful for some time after watching her film. "I want catharsis to happen to my audience. I like them to find things in common with the film's characters," she says.

"If the emotion is something you carry and you still have the film in your mind after three days, that's what I want"

After winning two awards at TIFF in Romania, Dornaz was invited to the Chicago South Asian Film Festival and the Vermont International Film Festival. "It was a sold-out screening of Like a Fish on the Moon in Vermont, and I had a very long Q&A with the audience. They were asking me questions, but I was also asking them questions because it helped me understand what different cultures get from my film," she says.

The Iranian writer and film director was born in 1988 in Tehran and started her artistic path by being the best student in her painting classes. However, the need for an audience larger than the one a painter receives made her switch paths from graphic design to film directing.

In 2011, while studying graphic design at Alzahra University in Tehran, she discovered analogue photography, which offered her frames with different perspectives. "Framing is crucial to cinema because we can decide what we want the audience to see on the big screen," she says.

Looking back at a significant moment in her life when she was invited to watch one of Asghar Farhadi's films on the big screen, she reveals that "seeing the audience's reaction to the film, I said that I want to do something like that. You cannot have that while doing graphic design." This moment captivated Dornaz as the audience resonated with the energy of Asghar Farhadi's film.

Regarding what's coming next, her second feature film, Diaphanous, produced by Chinese Shadows, will be "harder and more complicated" than her first film, she says. With the script finished at the end of 2023, her next drama-based feature film can be described in one word: anger. "The anger you keep inside yourself as a woman dealing with violence. I think violence is always anger, and this time, we're going to see more of this emotion," she says."Cinema is the most important thing in my life. Cinema is my love," she says, believing that her passion for film brought her to this point of working on her next feature film and inspiring other female directors.

In this male-dominated industry, hard work defeats any stereotype, and Dornaz has shown that she is worthy of many awards through the work and talent she puts into everything she does. "I enjoy dealing with this male-dominated industry because I feel powerful, like a fighter that won a battle," she says, proudly being a role model for other women who want to shine in the spotlight of the film industry.

Dornaz is influencing women through her devotion to cinema and the next generation of filmmakers for whom she has a "crucial piece of advice," she says. "Make movies. Don't wait to finance them. Just make them. Get a camera, make a movie, and show it to important people."

Painting by Dornaz Hajiha.

Magazine version written and designed by Cristina Sandu: