Kiana Firouz

Who is Kiana Firouz?

Kiana Firouz is an Iranian lesbian activist and filmmaker currently residing in the UK. She was the lead actress in the film Cul-de-Sac, a drama-documentary based on her own life and work, which was released in the UK in May 2010. In Iran, she worked underground as an activist for Iranian homosexual women's rights, shooting footage for a documentary about human rights abuses in Iran. Her activities having been discovered by Iranian security services, Firouz was forced to relocate to the UK.

She requested asylum from the British government, which was initially denied but was later granted in June 2010. The policy turn around came after protracted campaigning on behalf of Firouz by human rights organisations including Amnesty International, which took the case to European authorities.

The trailer for Cul-de-Sac, in which Firouz plays herself, had received over 30,000 hits on YouTube as of May 16, 2010, less than a month after it was uploaded.

Cul-de-Sac is a low budget production made by film directors and human right activists Ramin Goudarzi Nejad and Mahshad Torkan. The film has received no financial support or sponsorship form any governmental institutes or NGOs. The petiotion against Kiana Firouz's deportation from UK created by the directors of the film received more than 50000 signaturies in the first months. According to director Ramin Goudarzinejad, "We strongly believe in endorsing the human rights articles with no personal interpretation. We believe that the human rights prism itself is sufficient if it comes to practice in favour of securing every single human being’s right".