Afghan filmmaker Karimi to teach in Rome

(ANSA) - ROME, OCT 11 - Afghan filmmaker Sahraa Karimi is to teach at the National Cinema School's Experimental Centre for Filmography (CSC) in Rome, Culture Minister Dario Franceschini said Monday.
    Karimi, 36, will be Visiting Professor at the CSC for the 2021/2022 academic year, the minister said.
    She will teach a interdisciplinary course on innovative storytelling, in English.
    Karimi was, until she fled Afghanistan due to the Taliban takeover, the director of the Afghan Film Organization.
    On August 13 the Afghan director sent an open letter to the international community urging it to help Afghan refugees.
    Franceschini said Italy "is close to the Afghan people and wants to safeguard artists' creative freedom".
    Karimi has directed 30 short films, three documentary films and one fiction film " Hava, Maryam, Ayesha " which had its world premiere at the 76th Venice Film Festival in 2019.
    She has a PhD from the Film and Television Faculty of the Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Bratislava. Prior to fleeing Afghanistan during the 2021 fall of Kabul, she was the first and the only woman in Afghanistan to have a PhD in cinema and filmmaking. (ANSA).