01
Archive selection pending
Cinema & the constructed image
Essays and criticism on form, spectatorship, and the moment an image stops functioning as evidence.
Filmmaker · Writer · Emerging Distributor
Rasoul
Fatehi.
Stories about images, performance, and the uneasy machinery through which people try to be seen.
RF / 01
Tehran
to Berlin
Selected film / 2026
01
In post-production
Grizzly
A staged ransom video collapses into an intimate test of trust. When an AI system cannot verify the authenticity of the image, the people inside it are left with the same uncertainty.
- Writer / Director
- Rasoul Fatehi
- Status
- Editing & post-production
- Format
- ARRI Alexa · 2.39:1
- Festival materials
- Coming after final cut
H&A / 001
?
Original film still
coming after picture lock
“When every image can be manufactured, distrust does not disappear. It moves from the image into the people looking at it.”
Essays / criticism / notebooks
Writing
An editorial home for more than fifteen years of writing across cinema, culture, media, and technology.
02
Series in development
Technology & the politics of seeing
Notes on artificial intelligence, new media, and the systems that decide what becomes visible.
03
First entry forthcoming
Notes from directing
Production diaries, visual research, and concise reflections from films in progress.
Development slate
Future
A developing body of work moving from short-form fiction toward a long-term practice of filmmaking and international distribution.
02 / Short film
Neo-westernInfluencer
Two young lovers from rural Iran accidentally become viral outlaw celebrities. As their myth grows, they are forced to perform identities until the performance demands a real death.
Screenplay complete · development
03 / Short film
Static-frame fictionFloors
An evacuation order moves through an apartment building while ordinary rooms conceal forms of violence no architecture was designed to show.
Concept selected · writing next
About / curriculum vitae
Film first.
Systems underneath.
Rasoul Fatehi is an Iranian filmmaker and writer working across film, theatre, criticism, and new media. His practice examines performance, mediated identity, and the pressure images place on reality.
Alongside his artistic work, he has led digital businesses and cross-functional teams at scale. That experience informs a developing goal: to build an international distribution practice for Iranian short films, beginning with his own work.
Selected experience
2009—20262026
Writer & Director
Grizzly
Short fiction film in post-production. A 15-minute work about staged images, AI verification, and the uncertainty of trust.
2022
Writer & Director
The Child
Short film. A formally controlled work of repetition and misdirection, turning a search for a child into an encounter with obsession.
2014—2019
Theatre Director & Collaborator
Excess Theater Group / Tehran
Founder and director of Excess Theater Group; director of In Waiting for the Play at Blue Hall, Tehran City Theater; assistant director, movement designer, performer, and director's advisor across major Tehran venues.
2024—Now
Executive Vice President
SnappStore
Strategy and cross-functional leadership across product, technology, operations, marketing, people, finance, and data.
2023—2024
Managing Director
Namad Sarv
Led an export and multi-brand business across consumer products, manufacturing, and e-commerce.
2021—2022
Business Line Director
Snapp! Express
Directed the business line at the intersection of marketplace operations, growth, and customer experience.
2018—2021
Creative & Operations Leadership
Snapp Group
Built and operated products across live media, transport, news, and food delivery.
2009—2017
Writer, Editor & Creative
Independent / Media
Wrote and edited on cinema and culture; taught English; developed creative work across publishing and digital media.
Education
BA, English Language & Literature
Academic foundation for a practice spanning writing, translation, cinema, and international collaboration.
Creative practice
Film, theatre & criticism
Writer-director; theatre director; actor; cultural journalist and translator.
Distribution direction
Iranian short film
Building a future slate and international festival-distribution practice from the ground up.