Mahnaz Mohammadi

Mahnaz Mohammadi,Iranian documentary filmmaker

Mahnaz Mohammadi (born 1 January 1975) is an Iranian filmmaker and women's rights activist. She is currently in the custody of "unidentified" security forces for "unknown" reasons, after being taken from her Tehran home and arrested on 26 June 2011 according to the Iranian opposition website Kaleme.^[1] Iranian judicial authorities have neither announced nor made any comments about her arrest.^{[citation needed]}

Mohammadi was the director of the short documentary "Women Without Shadows,"^[2] about the lives of homeless and abandoned women in a state-run shelter has been shown and awarded in several international film festivals. She has also contributed to veteran filmmaker Rakhshan Bani-Etemad's documentary "We Are Half the Iranian Population" about the role and the demands of Iranian women in the disputed presidential elections of 2009 which gave Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a second term in office. Following her arrest cinema industry sources in Paris told AFP that Mohammadi's passport was seized recently, preventing her from going to Cannes in May for the screening of Reza Serkanian's "Marriage Ephemeral," in which she was the lead actress.

Her arrest in June 2011 was the third since 2007. She was arrested for the first time in March 2007 with 32 other women's rights activists while peacefully protesting the trial of five of her fellow women's rights activists in front of a Teharan court.^{[citation needed]} Mohammadi was also arrested in August 2009 at Behesht-e Zahra cemetery as she laid a wreath on the grave of Neda Agha-Soltan, the 26-year-old woman who was shot and killed by a sniper during the crackdowns on protests against the reelection of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

References

1. ^ IRAN: Activist and documentary filmmaker seized; reasons undisclosed June 28, 2011
2. ^ Iran arrests documentary film-maker: report| AFP| 27 June 2011

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Name	Mohammadi, Mahnaz
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Date of birth	1 January 1975
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