Elli Safari is an Iranian documentary filmmaker based in the Netherlands, whose work engages with philosophical, social, and cultural questions, with a focus on societal injustice, religious reform, and feminism.

She has been active in cinema for more than five decades. Her practice spans directing, screenwriting, editing, costume design, and photography. She began her artistic path at a young age as a writer for a well-known Iranian literary magazine, where she developed an early engagement with language, image, and thought.

She studied philosophy as well as film and television sciences at the universities of Amsterdam and Utrecht, an academic foundation that continues to shape the reflective and philosophical dimensions of her work.

Elli Safari began her career in cinema as a screenwriter and assistant director, collaborating with prominent Iranian filmmakers such as Naser Taghvaei. Among her early works, she was involved in the production of the widely known Iranian television series Dear Uncle Napoleon, a landmark in Iranian popular culture.

From the 1970s onward, she developed her own documentary practice, focusing on social realities such as poverty and life in marginalized communities. Her critical and socially engaged works were subject to censorship and were banned both before and after the Iranian Revolution, reflecting the uncompromising nature of her perspective.

Alongside her filmmaking, she played a significant role in film education. During the 1970s and 1980s, together with her first husband, the award-winning Iranian film director and actor Shahryar Parsipur, and her later husband, the editor Khosro Razi, she founded and ran a private film institute in Tehran. In 1979, she further established one of the first independent centers for film education in Iran. These spaces became vital environments for learning, exchange, and the development of new voices in Iranian cinema, and included a unique private archive of the history of cinema. Many of the key figures of Iranian art house cinema were among her students and collaborators, some of whom later became internationally renowned, including Mohsen Makhmalbaf.

Despite increasing pressure from the authorities and repeated attempts to shut these initiatives down, she continued teaching and working independently for many years. This period came to an end in 1990, when, after multiple arrests and imprisonment, her institute was forcibly closed and she was explicitly threatened with death should she continue her work. Under these conditions, she was forced to leave Iran.

In exile, she continued her filmmaking practice from the Netherlands. Her documentaries have been broadcast on Dutch television, the BBC, and screened at international film festivals in cities including London, Berlin, and Rome. Her work has also been shown at universities across the United States.

Among her recognized works is Medium of Love, which received special distinction by the Rome Film Festival. The film was further honored by the city of Rome, which awarded her the medal of honorary citizen.

Her films are marked by a humanistic perspective and a sustained attention to the unseen dimensions of everyday life, inviting reflection and deeper engagement with the social and philosophical layers of experience.

In recent years, through contact with a film researcher in Tehran working on the history of Iranian cinema, it has been affirmed that Elli Safari is the first Iranian female documentary filmmaker to have developed a continuous body of work. She was preceded only by the poet Forough Farrokhzad, who directed a single documentary in the 1960s before her untimely death. In this sense, Elli Safari stands as both the first and the only Iranian woman filmmaker of her generation to have sustained a lifelong cinematic practice.

Alongside her filmmaking, she continues to write, photograph, and engage with art. She has lectured on Iranian cinema in the Netherlands and is regularly invited as a panel member in discussions on Iranian film and culture.