The frame game: indie filmmaker Desiree Akhavan is riding high on a wave of unexpected success

When Desiree Akhavan sent off her debut movie to the judges at the Sundance Film Festival, she admits that it was a "shot in the dark". The 29-year-old had only left film school a few years before, the movie was shot over 18 days and she'd only finished it a few days before the deadline.
But not only was Appropriate Behaviour, which she wrote, directed and acted in, accepted, it also earned her the title of one of the festival's breakout stars.
Since then a wave of hype has come Akhavan's way, with a feature in the prestigious Filmmaker magazine and praise from entertainment trade website Variety, which said she could be the next Lena Dunham, the creator of the hit HBO series Girls.
This sudden success has taken Akhavan by surprise and, sitting opposite me in a cafe in New York's Greenwich Village, she is amused at the very idea being interviewed.
Yet she should not be surprised, as what the judges and critics saw in Appropriate Behaviour was a touching, frank, romantic comedy full of wry observation about love in the 21st century. The film revolves around Shirin, a bisexual Iranian-American who has no proper job, a recent break-up ­behind her and a life that is essentially going nowhere.
Akhavan too is a bisexual Iranian-American and though she says that the similarities end there, Appropriate Behaviour is about the main character's attempts to "find the balance" between the two ­cultures.
Among the memorable scenes is one in which Shirin tells her mother of her concern that her elder brother, a surgeon, might "find himself 10 years from now fat, bald and in a loveless marriage because he was rushing to become the world's best Iranian son".
When the mother retorts that she was only 19 when she married her father, Shirin replies: "This isn't the Islamic Republic of Iran. Do you see a hijab on my head?"
Akhavan explains that she wanted to portray a family who were "warm and loving but still had some very strong parameters around what you could and could not get away with".
"There are a lot of boundaries in Middle Eastern culture, there is a strong sense of respect for elders or any parents you encounter," she says. "Everybody wants to be a good child and I think that crosses immigrant lines.
"The heart of it, what makes a better Iranian child is . the right profession, the right location to be close to your parents, to be always a family unit, no matter what, even if you have your own family and your own kids."
The film's plot plays out Akhavan's belief that there's a "closeness" in Iranian-American families "that borders on too far" - you're "still one step in the womb" is how she phrases it.
"I think that you share things with your parents that you wouldn't necessarily share with anybody else and in these cultures it's a lot more involved than I've seen elsewhere.
"For better or for worse, though; I felt far more involved in my parents' marriage than any of the American families I saw."
Appropriate Behaviour was filmed after The Slope, a web series about a slice of life in the Park Slope neighbourhood of Brooklyn, that Akhavan completed as a college homework assignment and funded through Kickstarter, the online crowdfunding website. Between the two movies there is a clear progression; Shirin is a lot warmer and more complex than the characters in The Slope. Yet both films are interested in what it means to be an outsider trying hard to fit in, and doing so with questionable success, a feeling Akhavan knows well from her own past.
The people sitting next to us at our tiny table leave as Akhavan drains her black coffee, and she explains that her mother and father fled Iran after the 1979 revolution and moved to Rockland County, a wealthy suburb 20 minutes north of New York City, where she and her brother were brought up.
Akhavan attended the exclusive $41,000-a-year (Dh150,600) Horace Mann School, whose notable alumni include the Beat novelist Jack Kerouac. After that she went to Smith College and spent a year at the University of London, where she met one of her best friends, who would go on to found Parkville Pictures, the company that produced Appropriate Behaviour.
Speaking about her student days in London, Akhavan recalls living in a "crappy" flat in the East End and loving the city where she received her education in films and was nicknamed "New York".
With typical self-deprecation, Akhavan says the reality is she was a "loudmouth American from Rockland County", who later returned to New York, went to grad school at NYU and began her journey towards indie filmmaking.
Akhavan cites Woody Allen as a major influence - the structure of Annie Hall in particular - but says she is "not a fan now" because of allegations made about Allen's abuse of his stepdaughter. She also loves the British version of The Office for its cringe-inducing dialogue and admires the work of French director Catherine Breillat, especially her controversial Fat Girl, which was banned by the Ontario Film Review Board in 2001.
Other influences include the French director and feminist Agnès Varda but Akhavan saves most admiration for the Iranian-born Marjane Satrapi, who created the graphic novel Persepolis, which she later turned into a film. "What I really love about Persepolis was the relationship she depicted with the family; they were so close and they treated [the daughter] like such a little adult," she says.
"I felt that way too. I felt I was given a lot of responsibility and respect, both good and bad. The family there, they're so intelligent and they put so much faith in her."
Nowadays, Akhavan says that her family have come to accept her life and dismisses suggestions that her father must be a conservative who disliked Appropriate Behaviour. In actual fact, her family came to the Sundance Festival and sat in on a ­screening.
Akhavan says of her father's reaction: "He was so happy, he was crying. He was so proud.
"My mum loves it, she thinks it's funny. [My dad] also thinks it's funny. I think he has an old-school sense of humour. He likes lowest common denominator [comedy] like Two And A Half Men. He wishes I'd made My Big Fat Greek Wedding. For him that would have been a step in the right ­direction.
"They're so pleased and I think this is an immigrant in general note, your children making some kind of mark in the States and being the best at whatever they do."
If Akhavan finds her first taste of success overwhelming then the bad news for her is that there is probably more on the way. She is currently working on an animated web series for Sony and the next film is set to be about a high school student and a drama teacher who become emotionally involved then separate, after which the student takes revenge.
Akhavan's most immediate concern, however, is to find a buyer and distributor for Appropriate Behaviour, which will be no mean feat given the industry's prejudice against women, especially if they are as independent-minded as she so clearly is.
A mere 2 per cent of the 100 highest-grossing films in the US last year were directed by women; while being compared to Lena Dunham is one thing, becoming as successful as the red-carpet favourite is another. On the one hand Akhavan says that she is "super flattered" at the comparison with Dunham but also finds it "slightly sexist".
"I feel like there are so many boy wonders that come out, you're never saying the next [indie filmmaker] Todd Solondz," she says.
The future looks set to be more interesting than the status quo, at least in the world of independent film anyway. "I think there will be more funny women coming forward, there were a lot of them at Sundance this year, and we'll carve out a space for ourselves. I'd love to live in a world where there's more than one humorous successful ­female filmmaker."
Daniel Bates is a freelance journalist based in New York.
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