Born in Teheran in 1967, Jasmin Tabatabai grew up in Iran and Germany. A trained musician, she had her break-through in feature film with Katja von Garnier’s commercially successful road movie “Bandits”. Playing the boss of a women’s jail band, she became an idol for a whole new generation of young women. Tabatabai also composed the film’s hugely successful score that sold over 700,000 units, winning the “Golden Vinyl Record Award”. The “Bandits” score is said to be the biggest-selling European soundtrack ever.

In the late 1990s, Tabatabai became an icon of German film, playing lead characters in Helmut Dietl’s “Late Night Show” or Xavier Koller’s Oscar-nominated Tucholsky-adaptation “Gripsholm”. Her award-winning performance as a Persian lesbian transforming into a heterosexual man in “Fremde Haut – In Orbit” has made her a favourite at the 2006 German Film Awards, on a par with German actress du jour Nadja Uhl.