Hoda Taheri

Directing

Hoda Taheri

Born 1992-01-01 · Tehran, Iran

Hoda Taheri (born 1992), is an Iranian artist and filmmaker based in Berlin. In 2016, she received her bachelor's degree in visual communication and professional Design from Limkokwing University in Malaysia. Due to acting, and participating in controversial film projects, she fled to Germany in 2018. After moving to Berlin in 2019, she started studying as a Film Director at DFFB (Deutsche Film und Fernsehakademie Berlin). Her first short film Mother Prays All Day Long (2022) was awarded a Special Mention at the Locarno Film Festival and was nominated for the German Short Film Award. Her second short film, As If Mother Cried That Night (2023), premiered in Locarno. Her debut feature film, I'll Plant My Hands in the Garden, is currently in the development stage. It is a co-direction project with Boris Hadžija and was selected by Locarno Residency in 2023.

Acting credits

I Plant My Hand in the Garden poster
NR

Hoda, an Iranian refugee living in Berlin, is pregnant and in love with Boris, a queer gay man from Serbia. Together, they decide to marry and raise the child, imagining a future built on their own terms. As they prepare for the wedding and enter more deeply into each other’s worlds, their relationship is seriously tested by all the red tape and their families’ expectations and histories that neither of them can leave behind. Surrounded by relatives, memories and inherited ideas of love and parenthood, Hoda and Boris begin to question the roles they are about to take on. What starts as a plan to become a family gradually turns into a more intimate and uncertain question: can they reinvent what it means to be a couple without losing what brought them together?

I Plant My Hand in the Garden

2026

Mother Prays All Day Long poster
4.2

Confused between German bureaucracy and questions about sexuality, Hoda, an Iranian asylum seeker in Berlin, finds herself emotionally and sexually hooked on Magdalena, who promised to grant her asylum by marrying her. Due to changes in Magdalena's private life, the decision of marrying Hoda becomes more complex for her.

Mother Prays All Day Long

2022

Out of Frame poster
1.0

Living in the confinement of a shared apartment with her controlling mother, Narges is soon confronted with the traumatic situation that women face under patriarchy. A sensitive, brave account about womanhood in modern-day Iran.

Out of Frame

2022

Mother Is a Natural Sinner poster
NR

Hoda, an Iranian refugee in Germany, lives with her boyfriend, Hadi. An unexpected pregnancy leads her to examine common beliefs regarding gender roles in a relationship and challenges the current social norms surrounding feminine bodies and motherhood.

Mother Is a Natural Sinner

2024

Behind the camera

I Plant My Hand in the Garden poster
NR

Hoda, an Iranian refugee living in Berlin, is pregnant and in love with Boris, a queer gay man from Serbia. Together, they decide to marry and raise the child, imagining a future built on their own terms. As they prepare for the wedding and enter more deeply into each other’s worlds, their relationship is seriously tested by all the red tape and their families’ expectations and histories that neither of them can leave behind. Surrounded by relatives, memories and inherited ideas of love and parenthood, Hoda and Boris begin to question the roles they are about to take on. What starts as a plan to become a family gradually turns into a more intimate and uncertain question: can they reinvent what it means to be a couple without losing what brought them together?

I Plant My Hand in the Garden

2026

I Plant My Hand in the Garden poster
NR

Hoda, an Iranian refugee living in Berlin, is pregnant and in love with Boris, a queer gay man from Serbia. Together, they decide to marry and raise the child, imagining a future built on their own terms. As they prepare for the wedding and enter more deeply into each other’s worlds, their relationship is seriously tested by all the red tape and their families’ expectations and histories that neither of them can leave behind. Surrounded by relatives, memories and inherited ideas of love and parenthood, Hoda and Boris begin to question the roles they are about to take on. What starts as a plan to become a family gradually turns into a more intimate and uncertain question: can they reinvent what it means to be a couple without losing what brought them together?

I Plant My Hand in the Garden

2026

As if Mother Cried That Night poster
NR

An Iranian couple clings to parenthood as a possible means to stay in Germany, unraveling a web of uncertainty and sacrifice in their desperate quest for asylum.

As if Mother Cried That Night

2023

Mother Prays All Day Long poster
4.2

Confused between German bureaucracy and questions about sexuality, Hoda, an Iranian asylum seeker in Berlin, finds herself emotionally and sexually hooked on Magdalena, who promised to grant her asylum by marrying her. Due to changes in Magdalena's private life, the decision of marrying Hoda becomes more complex for her.

Mother Prays All Day Long

2022

Mother Prays All Day Long poster
4.2

Confused between German bureaucracy and questions about sexuality, Hoda, an Iranian asylum seeker in Berlin, finds herself emotionally and sexually hooked on Magdalena, who promised to grant her asylum by marrying her. Due to changes in Magdalena's private life, the decision of marrying Hoda becomes more complex for her.

Mother Prays All Day Long

2022

Mother Is a Natural Sinner poster
NR

Hoda, an Iranian refugee in Germany, lives with her boyfriend, Hadi. An unexpected pregnancy leads her to examine common beliefs regarding gender roles in a relationship and challenges the current social norms surrounding feminine bodies and motherhood.

Mother Is a Natural Sinner

2024

Mother Is a Natural Sinner poster
NR

Hoda, an Iranian refugee in Germany, lives with her boyfriend, Hadi. An unexpected pregnancy leads her to examine common beliefs regarding gender roles in a relationship and challenges the current social norms surrounding feminine bodies and motherhood.

Mother Is a Natural Sinner

2024