Photo Credit: Meysam Motazedi
Alireza Keymanesh, born in Iran (1985) and currently based in Toronto, Canada, is a filmmaker, actor, and adventurer whose works draw inspiration from theater, contemporary dance, poetry, psychology, and dark comedy. In 2009, he graduated in Acting from Tehran University of Arts before undertaking a one-year practical dance-theater research at ArtEZ University of Arts in the Netherlands in 2013. Later on, he earned an MFA in Film from York University in Canada in 2024.
Keymanesh has received several international awards as a filmmaker for his co-directed short film Flatland (2017), among them the POOL Movement Art Film Festival, Germany (2022), Brussels Independent Film Festival (2018), Sydney World Film Festival (2018), Master of Art Film Festival, Bulgaria (2018), European Film Festival (Mainstream & Underground), Russia (2017), Calcutta Cult Film Festival, India (2017), and Feel the Reel Festival, England (2017). In 2021, his other short film My Lovely Home received the Golden Filmmaking Award at the Greensboro Dance Film Festival in North Carolina, United States.
Alireza’s acting is deeply rooted in theater, and beyond a realistic approach, he frequently explores the intersection of body and mind, drawing from Eastern somatic practices and psychophysical techniques. Throughout his career, he has portrayed a wide range of roles in both theater and cinema, from deeply grounded characters to highly physical, including comedic performances.
In his early career as an actor, Keymanesh was a principal member of the 84 Theater Group leading by Ali Akbar Alizad, where he appeared in the works of playwrights such as Samuel Beckett, Sławomir Mrożek, Jean Genet, and David Mamet. His interest in the critical, experimental yet academic, and minimal approach of the 84 Theater Group led to a ten-year-long uninterrupted collaboration.
In 2011, Keymanesh received the Second Actor of the Year award at the 9th Night of the Iranian Theater Forum for his highly physical, grotesque soliloquy in The Clown and I (Mono Talkhak), directed by Nima Dehghani. A few years later, he was once again named Best Actor of the Year at the 14th Iranian Theater Forum’s Annual Acting Ceremony for his portrayal of Puck in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, directed by Mostafa Koushki. The production, propelled by its overwhelming popularity, ran for an entire year on Iranian stages before touring Poland, India, and the Czech Republic. In addition to this recognition, Keymanesh was honored at the 35th Fajr International Theater Festival and was nominated as one of Iran’s best actors between 2019 and 2022 at the Hafez Awards.
Furthermore, in 2017 he founded 33Projects, now known as 33Spaces, described as: a decentralized space for artistic exploration, creativity, expression, and creation. Over the past several years, Alireza has increasingly focused on storytelling and narrative cinema. Besides expanding his acting career in this medium, he mostly plays in his own films. In his movies he blends intellectual exploration with emotional depth, challenging creative boundaries and pushing the limits of conventional cinema.
TEACHING
Beyond his film and acting career, Keymanesh has also been dedicated to teaching and coaching actors and dancers since 2009. Later on he named his classes as 33School (one of the creative hubs within 33spaces)—an underground decentralized theater and dance space in Iran—where he has been promoting an interactive and exploratory approach to theater and dance, encouraging students to push boundaries and explore their creative potential.
From the outset, Keymanesh established his classes as an independent and underground space in response to Iran’s restrictive environment. His goal was to create an alternative, open-minded approach to theater and dance, bypassing the strict religious regulations imposed by the Islamic Dictatorship Government of Iran—such as the ban on dance, mandatory hijab, dress codes, and gender segregation. He sought to offer students a safe and welcoming space where they could free both mind and body.
His teaching philosophy stood in stark contrast to the rigid methods of official institutions, academies, and universities in Iran, which often placed teachers in an authoritarian role as all-knowing figures. Instead, Keymanesh developed a methodology that positioned the teacher as a fellow explorer, learning alongside the students. "I do not teach—I perform. Every class is a performance for me. I make myself open to new discoveries and improvise as I go," he says.
Photo Credit: Jeremy Suyker
Following his return to Iran in 2014, he intensified his teaching, choreography, and dance activities, focusing primarily on the body-mind techniques he had previously studied in the Netherlands with Eva Karczag, with whom he continued to enrich his physio-philosophical explorations to this day. As part of his contributions to the field, he introduced and developed the Ideokinesis method in Iran—not only through workshops and lectures but also by translating the book Ideokinesis by André Bernard, Wolfgang Steinmüller, and Ursula Stricker into Farsi.
THOUGHTS AND REFLECTIONS
Photo Credit: Amir Pousti
I have always struggled to place myself in a specific category. Ever since I was a child, my enthusiasm has fluctuated—drawn toward exploring new things, discovering the unknown, and embracing challenges. Rather than being confined to a fixed identity, I am drawn to what I call the shape of no-shape. In my artistic career as a filmmaker, actor, writer, and choreographer, I strive to let each project reshape my work, allowing the concept to define—or redefine—its form.
Humans and their relationships with the world around them have always fascinated me. I love collective living. Art by its very nature, is an act of sharing and communication—it cannot exist in isolation. It is a force that binds us to each other, to nature, to the universe, to something greater than ourselves. Moreover, this magical interplay between the present, the past, and the future sparks countless questions in my mind, fueling my desire for fresh, untapped experiences—for myself and perhaps for some other people. I am also aware that what feels fresh to me may seem stale to someone else, just as their rotten idea might feel fresh to me.
My art does not necessarily reflect my personal beliefs. Fiction allows for exaggeration, contradiction, and deception—tools that shape the creative process and construct alternate truths or realities. While aspects of myself may inevitably seep into my work, I do not see them as a reflection of who I am but rather as a mirror for the audience. Since each person interprets art through the lens of their own lived experiences, social context, and personal perspective, I invite audiences to discover themselves in relation to my work—rather than searching for me within it.