Roya Rastegar

Exile of the Swans

Roya Rastegar is an award-winning filmmaker whose credits include Gaga: Five Foot Two (Netflix), Cypher (Tribeca Grand Jury Prize), Venus as a Boy (Tribeca Audience Award), QueenMaker (Hulu), The Legacy of Black Wall Street, and the acclaimed Wildness, which premiered at MoMA’s Documentary Fortnight and screened internationally at Tate Modern, the Whitney Biennial, the New Museum, and the Berlin, Gwangju, and Sharjah Biennials. A Creative Capital Fellow with a Ph.D. in the History of Consciousness, Rastegar’s work centers culture as counter-power. She is a co-founder of the Iranian Diaspora Collective.

PROJECT SYNOPSIS

EXILE OF THE SWANS - FEATURE DOCUMENTARY

Seven dancers across Iran risk everything to sustain their creative practice. Trained in secret by an Iranian-American prima ballerina, they choreograph a collective vision of freedom. Blending verité, interviews, and rare Iranian National Ballet archives, this magical realist, dance-driven documentary traces four generations reclaiming a stolen legacy.