Poems of Winter and Cigarettes

This diary-style documentary follows two days in the life of an eloquent and opinionated playwright and director, Siavish Shabanpour, a once promising young poet in Iran. While experiencing the seemingly mundane events of his life in snowy Toronto, Canada, Siavash expresses his wistful and witty opinions about culture shock and his new life as an immigrant. He slowly unveils his personal dilemma with love and sexuality while challenging the Iranian community’s sexual taboos in his plays. Meanwhile, struggling with language barriers and isolation at his university Theater Studies program, he seeks to find his place in Canadian society.

  • Sabereh Kashi
    Director
    Lalezar Street, Mourners of Surijan, When Milk Boils Over
  • Siavash Shabanpour
    Key Cast
    No One Thinks About the Garden, The Bright Side of the Moon
  • Emily Coutts
    Key Cast
    Crimson Peak, Barn Wedding
  • Zahra Saleki
    Key Cast
  • Sabereh Kashi
    Producer
    Lalezar Street, When Milk Boils Over, Mourners of Surijan
  • Sabereh Kashi
    Writer
    Our Summer in Tehran, Mourners of Surijan, Muqarnas, Lalezar Street
  • Sabereh Kashi
    Editor
    Our Summer in Tehran, Boys and Men Healing, Calling Nate, Mourners of Surijan, Muqarnas
  • Project Title (Original Language):
    شعرهای زمستان و سیگار
  • Project Type:
    Documentary
  • Runtime:
    21 minutes 30 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    March 30, 2016
  • Production Budget:
    5,000 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    Canada
  • Country of Filming:
    Canada
  • Language:
    English, Persian
  • Shooting Format:
    HDV
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Diaspora Arts Connection
    Berkeley
    United States
    April 24, 2016
    Rough-Cut Screening
  • UC Irvine
    Irvine
    United States
    September 22, 2016
  • San Jose States University
    San Jose
    United States
    December 11, 2016
Director Biography - Sabereh Kashi

Documentary filmmaker and editor Sabereh Kashi is passionate about connecting people through storytelling to foster cross-cultural communication. She made her first documentary Lalezar Street (2000) in Iran. She evolved her personal storytelling skills while editing Calling Nate (2004) about a transgender teenager in Canada, and editing and co-writing Our Summer in Tehran (2011) by Academy Award nominee Justine Shapiro. These films have screened in internationally recognized film festivals (IDFA, HotDocs, Fajr, UNAFF, Inside Out), and on American, European, Latin American, and Israeli national televisions. Her current project is Home Yet Far Away, a personal documentary about her journeys between Iran and the U.S. to reconnect with her roots in Iran and to make a new connection between American and Iranian people. The film was featured on BBC Persian’s “Chamedan” (Suitcase) which was broadcast to over 120 million Persian speaking people. She created the trailer for Sonita, which won World Cinema Documentary Grand Jury Prize at Sundance. She recently edited the award-winning short Surviving International Boulevard: Domestic Sex-Trafficking in Oakland. She is a filmmaker-in-residence of SFFILM. She co-founded Re-Present Media, a non-profit aiming to humanize media representations of underrepresented communities through personal documentary films and non-fiction media.

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