My favourite Iranian filmmakers.
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2.
Samira Makhmalbaf
Director, September 11
Born in Tehran, Samira is the daughter of director Mohsen Makhmalbaf. She got her first taste of the cinema when she was eight, playing a cameo role as a little girl in her father's film The Cyclist. After leaving school at 15 because she found the teachers incompetent, she began learning to make films...
5.
Bahman Ghobadi
Director, Turtles Can Fly
Bahman Ghobadi was born in 1969 in Baneh, in the province of Iranian Kurdistan, near the Iran-Iraq border. Shortly after graduating from the National Audiovisual School, he made his first short, immediately acclaimed by the local critics. One of these short films, "Life in Fog" (1999) is even considered as the most famous short ever made in Iran...
6.
Abbas Kiarostami
Writer, Certified Copy
Abbas Kiarostami was born in Tehran, Iran, in 1940. He graduated from university with a degree in fine arts before starting work as a graphic designer. He then joined the Center for Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults, where he started a film section, and this started his career as a filmmaker at the age of 30...
7.
Asghar Farhadi
Writer, A Separation
Asghar Farhadi was born in 1972 in Iran. He became interested in cinema in his teenage years and started his filmmaking education by joining the Youth Cinema Society of Esfahan in 1986 where he made 8mm and 16mm short films. He received his Bachelors in Theater from University of Tehran's School of...
9.
Majid Majidi
Director, Children of Heaven
Majid Majidi was born on April 17, 1959 in Tehran, Iran to a middle class family. He started acting in amateur theater groups at the age of fourteen. After receiving his high school diploma, he started studying art at the Institute of Dramatic Art in Tehran. After the Islamic Revolution of 1979, his interest in cinema brought him to act in various films...
11.
Bahram Beizai
Writer, Killing Mad Dogs
Bahram Beizai started skipping school from around the age of 17 in order to go to movies which were becoming popular in Iran at a rapid pace. This only fed his hunger to learn more about cinema and the visual arts. By 1961 he had already spent a lot of time studying-and researching- ancient persian and pre-Islamic culture and literature...
12.
Forugh Farrokhzad
Self, The House Is Black
Farugh Farrokhzad was primarily a poet. Indeed, she is regarded as one of the most important poets of the twentieth century in Iran, which has a millennium of poetic tradition behind it. Although she only made one film, the 22 minute so-called documentary "The House is Black", this work is generally seen as the crucial precursor of the Iranian New Wave.
19.
Maziar Miri
Director, Howze Naghashi
He, Maziar Miri, was born on 1 February 1974 in Darband neighborhood in Tehran. He graduated in Film Editing, and started working in Editing Dept of Channel 2 IRIB in 1995. After making a few short films, working as an assistant in the cinema, and editing a few films and serials, He made His first feature film Unfinished Song in 2000...
21.
Kiarash Anvari
Writer, La dernière scène
Kiarash Anvari was graduated from "Soureh" Institute of Higher Education in Tehran in 2000 and received his B.A in filmmaking from there. He also received his master degree in cinema studies from University of Aix-Marseille I, in France,Aix-en-Provence, on 2006. As a writer/director, He has made seven short films...
22.
Sadaf Foroughi
Writer, Une impression
Sadaf Foroughi (born 27 July 1976 in Tehran, Iran) is an Iranian film maker, video artist and film editor. Foroughi has a bachelor degree in French literature. After receiving her master degree in film studies from University of Provence in Aix-en-Provence, France, she continued her studies on PHD in film philosophy. She also completed the New York Film Academy's film making courses.
26.
Rafi Pitts
Director, It's Winter
Rafi Pitts' films have attained acclaim and awards around the globe. His first feature, The Fifth Season, was the first Franco-Iranian co-production since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, and premiered in Venice. Sanam was hailed by French critics as the Iranian The 400 Blows. In 2003, Pitts presented his controversial feature documentary...
28.
Ebrahim Hatamikia
Director, The Glass Agency
Ebrahim Hatamikia, who is internationally renowned for his role in the cinema of Iran in the 1990s, was born in 1961 in Tehran, Iran. He left the Art University where he studied script writing. He began his directing career with the film "The Identity" in 1986 and some short films and documentaries about the Iran-Iraq War...
32.
Masud Kimiai
Director, Crime
Massoud Kimiaei was born in Tehran in 1941. He became well known when in 1969 he directed his second film, Gheisar, which was considered a turning point in the Iranian cinema; he depicted the ethics and morals of the romanticized poor working class of the Croesus' Treasure genre through his main protagonist...
33.
Rakhshan Bani-Etemad
Director, Under the City's Skin
Graduated in the field of film directing from The Faculty of Dramatic Arts and joined the Iranian TV in 1973 beginning her career as continuity girl and assistant director. Later on, she made a number of short documentaries and directed her first picture 'Kharej az Mahdudeh (1986)'. Her next films are 'Zard-e Ghanari (1988)', 'Pul-e Khareji (1989)', 'Nargess (1992)' and 'Rusari Abi (1995)'.
34.
Mohammad Rasoulof
Director, Iron Island
Mohammad Rasoulof was born in Shiraz, Iran in 1972. He is an independent director, writer and producer. He studied sociology. Rasoulof started his filmmaking with documentaries and short films. For his first film 'Gagooman'(The Twilight, 2002) Rasoulof won the prize for the best film at the Fajr Film Festival in Iran...
35.
Marzieh Makhmalbaf
Writer, The Day I Became a Woman
Marziyeh Meshkini Born in 1969 in Tehran. She is the wife of celebrated Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf. She studied Cinema in Makhmalbaf Film school for 8 years. Her first film 'The Day I Became a Woman", (a 3-episode story) attended the Critics Week category in Venice International Film Festival in 2000 and won 3 awards from that festival...
37.
Daryush Shokof
Writer, Breathful
Daryush Shokof is an artist and film-maker who left Iran in the 1970s for the U.S. and under the name of AliReza Shokoufandeh. He studied mathematics and physics at E.N.M.U. and then went on to get a masters degree in management from U.D. in Texas. He became a full-time artist in Germany where he moved to from New York in early 1980s...
40.
Reza Mirkarimi
Producer, Today
Reza Mirkarimi was born in 1967 in Tehran and graduated from the Fine Arts University in Graphic Arts. His cinema activities began in 1987 with a series of shorts followed by two TV series aimed at young people. His 1999 first feature, 'The Child and The Soldier', has won several national and international awards...
41.
Ali Hatami
Director, Mother
Abbas Ali Hatami was born in Tehran, Iran in 1944. He graduated from the College of Dramatic Arts and began his professional career as a writer of short TV screenplays and also as a playwright. Among his plays are: The Demon and the Bald Hassan, Adam and Eve, The Fisherman's Story, City of Oranges, Talisman and Silk...
43.
Mania Akbari
Director, 20 Fingers
Mania Akbari was born in 1974 in Tehran, Iran. The daughter of schoolteachers, she started painting at a very early age. Later she worked as cinematographer and assistant director on documentaries, which reoriented her towards cinema. Her international breakthrough occurred, however, not as a result of her work behind the camera but in front of it...
50.
Niki Karimi
Actress, The Hidden Half
Born in 1971 in Tehran, Niki Karimi is the most famous, internationally acclaimed Actress and filmmaker in Iran. She began her work as an actress with films such as "Sara" by Dariush Mehrjouii, which she won best actress award at "San Sebastian" film festival and in "Nantes film festival in 1992. After...
63.
Saman Moghadam
Director, Maxx
Saman Moghadam was born in Tehran, Iran on 6th of January, 1969. He became interested in filmmaking and storytelling in his teens, and continued to follow up on his dream of becoming a filmmaker after graduating high school. He studied filmmaking at the Cinematic Educational Complex in Tehran. Moghadam was trained by such veteran directors including Kimiayi...
65.
Abdolreza Kahani
Director, Bist
Abdolreza Kahani born in 1973 is an Iranian filmmaker. In 2009, Kahani's film Twenty won the Special Jury Prize and the Prize of Ecumenical Jury at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. The film observes a small band of employees trying to save a depressed Iranian banquet hall which the owner has decided to close in 20 days.
73.
Rasoul Sadrameli
Director, I Am Taraneh, I Am Fifteen Years Old
Rasoul Sadrameli was born in December 1954 in Isfahan, Iran. The Managing Director of MILAD FILM (established in 1979, the first company in distribution and production of Iranian films after revolution) began his journalism career while he was just 17, and he collaborated with Etela'at Newspaper as reporter...
79.
Reza Dormishian
Producer, Asabani nistam!
Reza Dormishian was born in Tehran, Iran in 1981. At a young age, he was drawn to the world of cinema. In 1997 he started writing as a film critic for several newspapers and later as executive editor for cinema books and magazines. He also worked as a screen writer. Dormishian had several collaborations with prominent directors such as Dariush Mehrjui, Fereydoun Jeyrani, and Alireza Davoudnejad.
80.
Rouzbeh Rashidi
Director, Only Human
Rouzbeh Rashidi is an Iranian independent filmmaker. He has been making films since 2000 when he founded the Experimental Film Society in Tehran. Since then, he has worked completely apart from any mainstream conceptions of filmmaking. He strives to escape the stereotypes of conventional storytelling and instead roots his cinematic style in a poetic interaction of image and sound...
87.
Massoud Bakhshi
Director, A Respectable Family
Born in Tehran in 1972, Massoud Bakhshi got noticed for his very personal shorts, made between 1999 and 2010. Ranging from the serious ('Identification of a Woman', 1999) to the hilarious and biting (Tehran Has No More Pomegrenates!), from documentary to fiction, his body of work is varied and challenging. After a first foray into the realm of imaginative narration (the 12 minute Baghdad Barber)...
93.
Mohsen Amiryoussefi
Director, Bitter Dream
Mohsen Amiryoussefi was born in 1972. He graduated with a degree in mathematics from Isfahan University. After writing several screenplays for both screen and stage, he completed his first short film in 1997, based on a story by Kafka. His short film Stony Hands, and the documentary Caravan are some...