Nelofer Pazira, who directed and stars in Act of Dishonour, is a Canadian filmmaker, author and journalist.
Nelofer Pazira will fly to Sydney from Toronto to present the Australian premiere of Act of Dishonour Tuesday 3rd August 2010.
Born in India where her father worked for the World Health Organization, Pazira grew up in Afghanistan. After living in Kabul for 10 years under Soviet rule, she escaped to Pakistan with her family and fled to New Brunswick, Canada in 1990.
She starred in the fiction film Kandahar about a woman who returns to Afghanistan to find her sister after receiving a suicidal letter from her. She won the Best Actress prize for the role from the Montréal Festival of New Cinema. Pazira then went on to co-direct and star in the documentary Return to Kandahar about her actual attempt to rescue her childhood friend, whose story inspired the Kandahar.
Pazira holds a degree in Journalism and English Literature from Carleton University (Ottawa), and an MA in Anthropology/Sociology and Religion from Concordia University (Montreal). She is the founder of a charity, the Dyana Afghan Women's Fund, which funds and supports education and skills training programs for women in Afghanistan. She is a UNESCO goodwill ambassador and former president of PEN Canada. She also works as a journalist for CBC Television’s The National.
Pazira has also written a memoir about her childhood in Afghanistan, A Bed of Red Flowers: In Search of My Afghanistan, which was the winner of the Drainie-Taylor Biography Prize for 2005.
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Her new film Act of Dishonour, focuses on Mena, young bride-to-be in Northern Afghanistan. Following tradition, she and her fiancé, Rahmat have little contact with each other. But when a Canadian film crew arrives and Mena befriends Mejgan (played by Pazira), their isolated world is disrupted, compelling them to reflect on their societal conventions.
Act of Dishonour was released in Canada last week to great acclaim. It has its Australian premiere at Possible Worlds.
(Meredith Mantik)