Maria

A young woman falls from a footbridge onto the car of a young film director on his wedding day. As he gets to know her family, he investigates just like a detective to discover the reason why the young girl he had met two years before fell.

"Fictional images from films or video clips of everyday life can sometimes be more credible and more horrible than reality. In fact, they can even change our perception of reality. Traditional Iranians don't tend to see the difference between what is true or false in films – they judge people on the basis of what they see in the picture. My film is based on a true story. Everything starts with a video being leaked – it showed an enthusiastic young actress playing the role of a prostitute during a rehearsal. Maria came from a traditional family living in a rural area. When the video circulated on the internet, her family thought she really had become a prostitute. They therefore decided to take revenge on Maria and the person who had filmed her." Mahdi Asghari Azghadi