Each year, iWomanTV partners with New York Women in Film and Television for their Annual Online Shorts Festival, a festival with a mission to highlight female filmmakers and female-led films. iWoman runs an audience choice award contest throughout the festival, where the top three most watched films during the festival’s run receive a cash prize. This year, the third place winner is Faryar Hoseini, the writer, director, and producer of Smothered. She sat down with iWoman TV founder & CEO Cathleen Trigg-Jones for an episode of our Creator Conversations series.
Hoseini came to the United States from Iran to pursue a career in film. She attended film school in Ohio before making her way over to the Big Apple to live out her dreams. This short film, Smothered, explores grief and how it can reconnect you with your loved ones. A father and son have lost their wife and mother, respectively, and must navigate the grief they are feeling.
Hoseini lost her own mom just a month after moving to the U.S. Her personal experience with such a tragedy helped her get into the mindset of the characters she wrote, understanding how grief can manifest in people in different ways.
Her film may evoke many different reactions from her audience. The ending is purposefully left ambiguous, in hopes that those watching will come to their own conclusions based on their personal interpretation of the story. Hoseini explains she “really trusts the audience,” because they are the best judge of the work that filmmakers and other artists produce.
She is currently working on the script for her first feature length film, which she hopes to get made next. Her top advice for aspiring filmmakers is to know what doesn’t work in your work and be willing to cut things out. She says if your movie can work without this scene, take it out.
The film will pull on your heartstrings and give an inside look on how other people experience grief. You can see Hoseini’s full interview with Cathleen Trigg-Jones at watch.iwoman.tv.
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