Grand Me
Esfahan, Iran. Melina lives with her grandparents since her parents' divorce. She wants to live with her mother, but this is not possible because both her father and new stepfather are against it. Besides that, Melina's mother struggles balancing her relationship with her new spouse and fostering a proper relationship with her daughter. Celebrating her 9th birthday, Melina is finally old enough to bring her custody case to court. With the law on her side, she hopes to eventually choose her own custodian. Unfortunately, Melina is not aware of how the adult world is organized and how reality will probably play out differently.
Atiye Zare Arandi
Atiye Zare Arandi is a storyteller, raised and educated with the heritage of the great traditional Persian art of telling stories and fables. She studied film directing with a focus on fictional narrative and continued to excel in her studies of dramatic literature. Currently she lives and works both in Esfahan and Tehran. Following her studies, Atiye has gained experience and recognition as writer/director for national Iranian fiction as well as documentary work. Her work has been represented several times at the International Cinema Verité Festival (Tehran). During the edit/post-production in Belgium and the Netherlands, Atiye collaborated with several highly established professionals to finish her international debut.
Bram Crols
Bram Crols (co-director & producer) is a graduate of the Royal Institute for Theatre, Cinema, Sound in Brussels (RITCS) and of the European Film College in Denmark. He gained experiences as a director and producer for TV, commercials and corporate AV productions before het redirected himself to the international creative documentary industry. Since 2007 Bram is connected as filmmaker and (executive) producer with the Belgian based production collective Associate Directors. He holds credits as (co)producer in about twenty international distributed documentaries including some industry changing documentaries such as ‘The King of Mont Ventoux’ (2014), an event documentary with involvement of EBU and 9 broadcasters, ‘Cold Case Hammarskjold’ (2019) by Mads Brügger, premiering and award winning at Sundance FF and ‘Nelly & Nadine’ (2022) by Magnus Gertten, premiering and award winning at Berlinale. Bram and his company colleagues received the 2016 ‘Gulden Mira' oeuvre award from the Flanders Film press for the combined oeuvre of Associate Directors. In 2014 Bram introduced the release network DocPoppies to introduce documentaries in Belgian cinema theatres. Since 2019 Bram is appointed part time lecturer at the AP Antwerp University College, focusing on factual storytelling in creative journalism.
","author_name":"Martin Lennon"}