Mazyar Mahan

Mazyar Mahan is a Teaching Associate and Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Texas at Dallas, where he teaches courses on transnational cinema, understanding film, and global art cinema. Mazyar’s dissertation focuses on the films made by Iranian expatriate filmmakers over the past decade. His academic work has appeared in journals such as Mise-en-scène and The Spectator. His upcoming book chapter, which offers a transnational post-Third Worldist feminist analysis of Shirin Neshat’s Looking for Oum Kulthum, will be published in the Palgrave Handbook of Arab Film and Media. Mazyar is also one of the editors of the forthcoming volume ReFocus: The Films of Shirin Neshat (Edinburgh University Press).

Mazyar’s first film, Return of the Repressed (2023), was selected to be screened at national festivals. His second film, Exile Echoes (2024), weaves together the voices of four generations of Iranian women, revealing their shared memories and resilience in the face of an oppressive regime’s relentless campaign against women’s freedom and rights. So far, this film has been selected to be screened in more than 20 national and international film festivals and has received awards from various festivals, including the Austin International Film Festival, the Five Continents International Film Festival, the International Motion Picture Awards, the Impact Docs Awards, and the Silver Wings International Film Festival. Mazyar’s recent film, A Drop at a Time (2025), has just begun its festival run.