Shadi Karamroudi

Shadi Karamroudi is a singular voice in contemporary Iranian cinema, moving fluidly between the frame and the director’s chair. With a background rooted in the rigor of performance, she approaches filmmaking as an exercise in psychological excavation, peeling back the layers of domestic tension and social fragility with a surgeon’s precision. Her aesthetic is defined by a haunting, atmospheric intimacy, where the silence between characters often speaks louder than the script itself. Her body of work, highlighted by projects such as The Exam and It Rains in Chicago, demonstrates a keen eye for the complexities of youth and the suffocating weight of societal expectation. Karamroudi’s craft has garnered significant international attention, earning accolades and official selections at prestigious gatherings like the Busan International Film Festival and the Warsaw Film Festival. Through a lens that is both unflinchingly honest and profoundly poetic, she continues to solidify her place as a formidable auteur of the new wave.