Naghmeh Farzaneh

Naghmeh Farzaneh is an Iranian artist and filmmaker based in Chicago. Her background in painting led her to embrace animation as her preferred medium for storytelling and filmmaking. Her independent films have gained international recognition and have received awards in festivals such as Heartland, Oberhausen, New Orleans, Tricky Women, Farhang, and the Chicago Children’s Film Festival, to name a few. Her autobiographical film, Scent of Geranium, was premiered by Vimeo Staff Pick and was named one of National Geographic’s ten Best Short Films of 2017.

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Over the last decade, Naghmeh has extensively collaborated with independent filmmakers and artists. She has held key roles as a director and art director for clients such as The New Yorker, ACLU, Meow Wolf, Sesame Workshop, and TED-ED. In her recent collaboration, Naghmeh was the animation director for the  New Yorker animated short documentary The Smallest Power, which screened at the Sundance Film Festival. In 2022, she was the art director for the Emmy-nominated MSNBC feature documentary In the Dark of the Valley, recognized for an outstanding Social Issue Documentary.

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In addition to her filmmaking and freelance work, Naghmeh is an associate professor at DePaul University, where she teaches filmmaking as an animated art form.