Maryam Tafakory (b. Iran) is an artist filmmaker living and working in London. Her work draws on the notion of ‘personal as political’ in a fractured narrative that involves a subtle negotiation between factual and fiction, exploring allegorical forms of visual narrative, using abstracted, symbolic and textual motifs and their on-screen representation. 

Part performance, her work draws on womanhood and rites of passage, interweaving poetry, (self)-censorship and religion, combining a formal minimalist syntax and figurative mode of representation. Sharing an Islamic Persianate identity, the narratives she develops are closely tied to her own recollections and experiences of being brought up in post-revolutionary Iran. Her work has been screened and exhibited internationally including, Rotterdam International Film Festival, Edinburgh International Film Festival, Zurich Film Festival​, London Short Film Festival, British Film Institute, Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival, Barbican Centre London, Ciné Lumière Institut Français, British Animation Awards and BBC Three.

Maryam's film Taklif (تکلیف) was scored by Manchester electronic band Metaphysical Human for Video Jam at Manchester Jewish Museum (12/11/15), a site specific event which explored different interpretations of faith and ritual; both religious and non-religious, private and collective. Taklif, meaning 'duty', is a lyrical story of religion as forced into a girl's life, seen from the innocent perspective of the child. It conveys the violence of early marriage and rites of passage, as faced by pre-pubescent girls in an Islamic context.