Maryam Zaree

Maryam Zaree — Biography

Maryam Zaree came into the world on 22 July 1983 inside Evin Prison in Tehran, where her mother was then imprisoned for political reasons; two years later the family relocated to Frankfurt, and she did not meet her father, jailed under threat of execution, until she was ten. She trained in acting at the Potsdam-Babelsberg film school.

Her breakout came as the lead in Burhan Qurbani's Shahada, which premiered at the 2010 Berlinale and picked up awards on the festival circuit; she went on to appear in Willkommen bei Habib, Ben O Değilim / I Am Not Him, and Marry Me!, and won the 2018 Grimme Award for her role in the series 4 Blocks. As a playwright she received the Heidelberg Theatre Prize in 2017 for Kluge Gefühle. In 2019 she stepped behind the camera for the first time, directing the documentary Born in Evin — an exploration of her own birth, her mother's imprisonment, and the family's emigration; screened in more than 40 countries, it won the Berlinale's Kompass-Perspektive award and, in 2020, the documentary prize at the German Film Awards.