Noted actress Vida Ghaffari is honored with four award nominations at the popular FANtastic Film Festival in San Diego, where she will also be a presenter. She is nominated for best actress and best short film for "Strangers in a Book" as well as best supporting actress and best on-screen couple for "Seeking Valentina" and is garnering numerous laurels.
San Diego, CA , October 31, 2015 (Newswire.com) - Noted Persian-American actress Vida Ghaffari is honored with four award nominations at the popular FANtastic Film Festival in San Diego, where she will also be a presenter. She is nominated for best actress and best short film for "Strangers in a Book" as well as best supporting actress and best on-screen couple with Armin Nasseri ("Jump") for "Seeking Valentina." Vida is also acting in Natural Born Filmmakers, so she is starring in several films that are official selections of this festival.
Vida will be presenting the best supporting actor award at this prestigious festival. "I am very honored to be a presenter and to receive all these nominations for my roles in these projects, especially since both projects are honest portrayals of the Iranian-American experience. I was really drawn to these films as they both forgo all the ridiculous stereotypes I often have to portray as an artist." She adds, "It's refreshing and empowering to portray someone who is just a human being living her everyday life with no labels. I was very excited to play Iranian-American characters with no stereotypes or accents whatsoever," said Vida.
"It was refreshing to break away from portraying a veiled woman or a vapid and glitzy Persian inhabitant of Beverly Hills."
Vida Ghaffari, award-winning actress and journalist
"Strangers in a Book" is a bold and psychological thriller that deals with loneliness and isolation in a city as vast as Los Angeles. It was written by Pedram Navab and directed by Marc Rezvani. This film follows Sara, artfully played by Vida in her dramatic leading role debut, as a hip and melancholic Iranian-American, who finds a misplaced book in a café. Intrigued by its contents, but unable to find the owner, she decides to interview the people in the notebook to decipher the identity of the mysterious man. The strangers whom she meets, considered the dregs of society, tell Sara stories about the enigmatic owner of the book, who is considered both diabolical and kind. Some of the characters the dejected but winsome Sara meets along the way are an ensemble of noted actors such as Jon Mack (“Saw VI”,”The Effects of Blunt Force Trauma”), Christy McGinity Gibel (“Little Women: LA”), Carl Bressler (“Battlefield”,”The Usual Suspects”), Kristin West (“Circus of the Dead”), Marv Blauvelt (“Jurassic City”), Pooneh Navab and Candy Fuentes.
"Seeking Valentina," written and directed by Armin Nasseri, follows Benjamin (played by Ali Bavarian), an Iranian-American writer, in the pangs of grief. When Benjamin takes in a whimsical and an engaging tenant (Kristin West of "Strangers in a Book") and she mysteriously disappears, it is for the audience to decide is she a ghost, a hallucination, a dream or a runaway. Vida plays Benjamin's concerned sister Ana.
As for upcoming projects, Vida is in talks for a role in an epic western and is acting in a film written and directed by multi-award winning filmmaker Thomas J. Churchill. She will also be starring in legendary cult Aussie filmmaker Mark Savage's films "Pond Scum" and "Circus of Dread" alongside renowned horror actor Bill Oberst Jr. Vida is best known for her appearances television comedies such as "The Mindy Project" and "Mind of Mencia". In addition to all of these accomplishments, Vida is an award-winning journalist who is about to launch, So Very Vida, her own eponymous blog about fashion and beauty.
The FANtastic Horror Film Festival is dedicated to providing an outlet for Independent Horror Films with a focus on movie viewers and the filmmakers. For three days, San Diego becomes the Horror Capital of the United States, and “plans to own the Independent Horror genre Halloween”. The FANtastic Horror Film Festival prides itself on offering “brand-spanking-new horror films, red-hot off the shelf, never seen in San Diego,” and “the freshest horror in the city.” This popular Festival runs from October 30 - November 1, 2015 at the Reading Cinemas Gaslamp in the heart of bustling downtown San Diego.
For more information about FANtastic Horror Film Festival, please visit: www.fhffsd.org More info about the films at www.seekingvalentina.com and https://www.facebook.com/StrangersInABook More info about Vida at http://www.imdb.me/vidaghaffari
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