Ambrosia

Director: Baharak Saeid Monir, 2012, Canada, 79 minutes, Cast: Sahar Biniaz, Camyar Chai, Heather Doerksen, Pauline Egan, Tina Milo Milivojevic, Zeus Ghadban

A beautiful and talented fashion designer’s excitement [Sahar Biniaz, Miss Universe Canada 2012] in landing a dream job is complicated when her new boss takes more than a professional interest in her, which makes her question her own values, threatens her marriage, and ultimately forces her to make a life-changing decision.

Baharak Saeid Monir

Baharak Saeid Monir was born in Tehran in 1971. Her first artistic experience was photography, which she continued into her late teens. After graduating high school, she studied cinematography, then joined the first private film school in Tehran to study filmmaking. Saeid Monir then started her own company in the late 1980s, producing commercial videos. Six years of capturing important moments of people’s lives and the way people behave, gave her some useful insights and experience in cinematography and directing. Six years of capturing important moments of people’s lives and the way people behave, gave her some useful insights and experience in cinematography and directing. Saeid Monir’s curiosity landed her in Vancouver in 1995. She studied filmmaking at Simon Fraser University and created films that drew on her personal experience based on the widening political and ideological rift between the West and the Middle East. Saeid Monir earned her BFA in “lm from Simon Fraser University in 2005 and was the recipient of the SFU Contemporary Arts Award for 2003 and 2004. Received her diploma of Entrainment Administration program at the University of British Columbia in 2007. She has worked on many films and videos, and has written, directed, and produced several short films. Saeid Monir’s last film, “Hejira” was shown at numerous film festivals around the world. Currently, Saeid Monir is working toward her Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing and Film Production at the University of British Columbia where she received the UBC Graduate Fellowship in 2009. Ambrosia is her first feature film.