Shahrzaad’s Tale tells us a story of a beautiful, strong and brilliant artist. Before the Iranian Revolution, Shahrzaad was a popular actress who performed in more than 50 movies, a director who made the first feature film as a woman in Iran, and a poet who published two anthologies. In the turbulence of the revolution in 1979, however, her life was completely changed and she is now homeless. Her intelligent and artistic insight is bright, and her life is amazingly dramatic. But director Shahin Parhami chose to make this film to be more than a simple documentary about a life. While showing how a talented woman is influenced by socio-political change, he brings a group of young Iranian woman artists (interestingly, there is a woman who has the same name as Shahrzaad) and traces the genealogy of the forgotten or disappeared women artists in Iranian history. In doing so, he takes Shahrzaad beyond the name of an individual to become an origin and symbol of Iranian woman artists. (CHO Hyeyoung)