FANAAn evolving story universe by Rita Rahimi.
A ruined Tehran. A dying regime. The living and the dead sharing the same broken city.
At the heart of FANA are ordinary people navigating extraordinary absurdity, violence, love, and survival.
An expanding universe of interconnected stories, characters, films, comics, music, and visual art.
The world is ending. Life goes on.
Bombs fall. The dead walk among the living. An authoritarian regime struggles to control a city it can barely keep alive.
And yet people still fall in love, make music, break rules, tell jokes, and dream of something better.
FANA is a world where the absurd and the tragic are inseparable.
THE CHARACTERS
A rebel without an off switch.
An artist, a dreamer, and a compulsive rule-breaker. Ahu drives through forbidden streets, makes a living outside the law, and refuses to surrender her freedom even when the world around her collapses.
She is the heart of FANA.
MEET AHU
The perfect citizen the system forgot.
Conservative, cautious, and almost painfully obedient, Adil has spent years admiring Ahu from a distance.
A bureaucratic mistake has made him invisible to the surveillance system. When their paths finally cross, two radically different ways of surviving the same nightmare collide.
Three old villagers. Traditional instruments. Heavy metal.
A fictional Iranian rock band whose absurd humor and rebellious music have found their way into FANA.
Ahu is a fan. Their songs, characters, and adventures are becoming part of the universe.
BEYOND THE SCREEN
2024 · Shamis Gallery, Tehran
FANA took physical form in a two-floor interdisciplinary exhibition combining original drawings, comics, moving images, projection mapping, and installation.
A world that began on paper expanded into a space audiences could walk through.
EXPLORE THE EXHIBITION
WHERE IT ALL BEGAN
2019 · Original Graphic Novel · 150 Pages
Before FANA became a cinematic universe, it lived on paper.
An intimate, hand-drawn journey through identity, memory, dreams, and transformation. Across three interconnected episodes, Rita and Ahu navigate a surreal world of emotional contradictions, dark humor, and the difficult process of self-acceptance.
A Maple in Flames established an early visual and narrative foundation for the universe that continues to evolve today.
READ THE BOOKWhat remains when everything that defines us disappears?
The name fanā comes from a concept of self-dissolution deeply rooted in Persian mystical and artistic traditions.
For Rita, it is a lifelong artistic exploration of identity, loss, transformation, and the possibility of becoming someone new.
Across different stories and mediums, FANA returns to the same question: Who are we when the world and the self we once knew falls apart?
ABOUT
Rita RahimiFILM DIRECTOR · VISUAL ARTIST · CREATOR OF FANA
A nonbinary Iranian filmmaker and artist, Rita has carried her imagination through war, displacement, and a lifetime of challenging expectations.
Through it all, one thing has remained constant: an unstoppable urge to draw, invent characters, tell stories, and bring impossible worlds to life.
Her worlds can be violent, heartbreaking, ridiculous, and strangely beautiful.
The goal has never been the image alone. It's the person inside the frame.
Long before generative AI, Rita was creating worlds by hand.
For over two decades, her imagination has moved through drawing, illustration, comics, animation, gallery exhibitions, and live-action filmmaking.
Her visual art isn't a chapter she left behind.
It's the foundation of everything she makes.
Today, AI gives her imagination new possibilities. But the characters, stories, and artistic vision were always there.
A fearless rebel who runs from intimacy. A perfect citizen the system has forgotten. Three elderly villagers playing heavy metal. These are some of the characters inhabiting FANA, Rita's expanding universe of stories born from personal experience, political absurdity, dark humor, and an insatiable curiosity about being human.
Rita brings over 20 years of creative experience and advanced AI production expertise to narrative filmmaking, animation, and visual storytelling.
She also shares her methods with more than 500 students at Inverse Online School
Today, she's developing original films and collaborating on ambitious cinematic projects that need a distinctive artistic voice.
STUDIO
Cinematic ads, music videos, and narrative films by Rita Rahimi.
Twenty years of drawing, animation, and live-action filmmaking meet the possibilities of AI-assisted production.
For brands, musicians, filmmakers, and production companies.
01 — ADS & BRAND FILMS
Short cinematic films for brands, campaigns, websites, and digital platforms.
Original concepts, distinctive visual direction, and polished production.
02 — MUSIC VIDEOS
Narrative and performance-driven music videos shaped through character, atmosphere, and visual storytelling.
Live-action, AI-assisted, or hybrid production.
03 — SHORT FILMS & PITCH TEASERS
Narrative shorts, proof-of-concept films, and cinematic teasers for producers, filmmakers, and production companies.
From script and character development to direction and final delivery.
04 — CHARACTER & WORLD DEVELOPMENT
Original characters, consistent designs, cinematic environments, and worldbuilding for films, animation, and serialized stories.
HOW I WORK
You work directly with me through concept development, visual direction, production, and delivery.
Revision rounds, schedule, and usage rights are established before production begins.
Yes. Generative AI is part of my production process, alongside original artistic direction, design, animation, editing, and filmmaking techniques.
Depending on scope, most projects take approximately 1–4 weeks. You'll receive a proposed timeline before production begins.
Yes. I collaborate internationally in English and Persian.
Typically, 50% to begin and 50% upon completion, with terms confirmed in the project agreement.
