Reza Mirkarimi was born on January 27, 1967 in Tehran where he graduated from the Fine Arts University in Graphic Arts. His cinema activities began in 1987 with a series of shorts followed by two TV series for young people. His 1999 first feature, The Child and The Soldier, has won several national and international awards including the Golden Butterfly at the 1999 Isfahan International Children and Teenagers Film Festival, Iran and the Montgolfiere d’Argent at the 2000 Festival of 3 Continents, Nantes, France, as well as the Golden Shoe at the 2001 Children and Teenagers Film Festival in Zelin, Croatia. The Child and The Soldier, was released in France in 2001. His 2000 second feature Under the Moonlight, dealing with social and religious issues, won the 40th Critics’ Week Best Feature Award at the 2001 Cannes International Film Festival. The film also won the Best Director’s Award as well as the Special Jury Prize at the 2001 Tokyo IFF. A fifth feature, As Simple As That, won the 2008 Golden St George Best Film Award at the Moscow IFF.Three of his films have been entered by Iran for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar: So Close, So Far (2005), A Cube of Sugar (2011) and Today (2014). Reza Mirkarimi has also sat on several international film festival juries.
The Asia Pacific Screen Academy expresses its respect for and acknowledgement of the South East Queensland Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. We pay our respects to the Traditional Owners of country, including the custodial communities on whose land works are created and celebrated by the Asia Pacific Screen Awards. We acknowledge the continuing connection to land, waters and communities. We also pay our respects to Elders, past and present. We recognise the integral role Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and First Nations peoples continue to play in storytelling and celebration spaces.
