Biography

Marzieh Vafamehr (Persian: مرضیه وفامهر) is an Iranian independent filmmaker, actress, social and women's rights activist living in Tehran. She has been active in the One Million Signatures campaign in Iran for more than twenty years.

She is married to the great master in cinema, photographer, film director and screenwriter Nasser Taghvai. Vafamehr was arrested on 29 June 2011, reportedly due to her acting in Granaz Moussavi's 2009 Iranian-Australian film My Tehran for Sale that is critical of her native Iran. She was released on 24 October 2011, after posting unspecified bail. It was reported that she was sentenced to 90 lashes and a year in prison for appearing in the movie as an actress whose work is banned by the Iranian authorities. On 27 October 2011, Amnesty International reported that an Iranian appeals court had reduced Vafamehr's prison sentence to three months and overturned the flogging sentence. Eventually Vafamehr was released after 118 days from Qarchak Prison, but she was banned from making or playing in films and any forms of cultural activities as well as from leaving Iran.

She is the first Iranian woman who acted in cinema without the hijab after the Iranian revolution .She is the first Iranian woman who published the picture of her romantic kiss with Nasser Taghvai in Nowruz 2013. She was one of the founding members of the "Women's Citizenship Center" NGO in 2013.

She is an activist for realizing the revolution of woman, life, freedom