
NILOOFAR ASADI
Writer. Director . Producer
Niloofar Asadi is a San Francisco-based writer, director, and producer. She started her professional career in 2002 and has since worked as a director, producer, writer, and art director in various artistic settings. She has also written and directed plays on international stages.
She explores character-driven stories by evoking a human view of characters' emotions and motives with the power of visual storytelling. Her work signifies existential themes like remembrance, presence, time, trauma, and death, focusing on individual power and vulnerabilities while de-emphasizing the social roles her characters perform.
By portraying characters in a state of crisis, she exposes the viewer to the existential and psychological conditions of her characters, aiming to provoke complex emotional responses, whether self-reflective or sympathetic. She adopts a subjective approach to crafting these settings, often drawing on her own experiences to demonstrate how a character's response to disaster and how their identity changes.
Niloofar's vision in pursuit of a universal voice is largely shaped by her experiences of displacement and her endeavor to redefine her artistic identity in the cultural landscape of the host society. Having experienced suppression and censorship as a female artist in a patriarchal society back in Iran, she has always maintained a critical perspective on dominant societal and cultural trends.
In 2012, Niloofar founded AG91, a platform for producing narratives, documentaries, and theatrical performances. Her experiences working with diverse visual forms and media have given her a distinctive visual eloquence that continues to enrich the unique language of her films. Since her migration to the US in 2015, she has kept expanding her universal visual storytelling language and rejects the standard casting of a middle eastern artist with an imposed focus defined by the dominant trends.
Her short films and documentaries have been selected and recognized by international film festivals such as the Palm Springs International Short Film Festival, Norwich Film Festival, Prague International Film Awards, and the Africa Human Rights Film Festival. Her depiction of Iran's social and political crisis won her the 2022 Future Art Award from MOZAIK Philanthropy.
Niloofar has an MFA in Motion Pictures and Television-----Directing----- from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco.

"I narrate stories
that motivate us to sympathize with people who face complexities."
niloofar asadi
AWARDS
2022 Future Art Award
MOZAIK
2022
OFFICIAL SELECTION
PRAGUE
INTERNATIONA
FILM AWARDS
2021
OFFICIAL SELECTION
AFRICA
HUMAN RIGHTS
FILM FESTIVAL
2021
COVER
AWARD
ESTI Magazine
2022
MARKET
PALM SPRINGS INTERNATIONAL SHORT FILM FESTIVAL
2022
The Cypress Tree
Feature Film, Development, 2023.
Gordāfarīd
Short Film, Mozaik, Future Art award, 2022.
Behind me, No wind
Short Documentary, 2022.
Woman. Life. Freedom
Photography Series, ESTI Magazine, Cover, November 2022.
LampLight
Short Film, Palm Springs International Short Film Festival, Market, 2022.
In Pursuit of Freedom
Official selection, Short Documentary; Africa Human Rights Film Festival, 2021.
Presence
Official Selection, Best short movie; Prague International
Film Awards 2021.
Reflection
Photo Exhibition; The Laundry, San Francisco, California, 2019.
Witness
Photo Exhibition; Metreon, San Francisco, California, 2018.
Friday
Theatrical play, Village Theater, and Art Gallery,
Danville, California, 2018.
YOURK OPERA
Theatrical play, Buriel Clay Theatre,
San Francisco, California, 2016.