Top 5 Iranian directors you should know

Get to know top five Iranian directors who define cinema boundaries of Iran with their works serving as best introduction to Iran's "7th Art":

Abbas Kiarostami

The veteran Iranian filmmaker passed away on July 4, 2016, following a heart attack at the age of 76.

He is mostly known as a screenwriter, film editor, art director and producer as well as a poet, photographer, painter, illustrator, and graphic designer.

Throughout his career, Kiarostami has won many awards, including the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Festival in 1997 for his film ‘Taste of Cherry’.

Asghar Farhadi

Farhadi, born in 1972, is an Iranian film director and screenwriter. Most notable among his awards, he has received a Golden Globe Award as well as two Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film in 2012 and 2017.

He was named one of the 100 Most Influential People in the world by Time magazine in 2012.

The Iranian filmmaker won his second Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film for ‘The Salesman’ at the 89th edition of the Academy Awards ceremony held in Los Angeles, California, on February 26.

Dariush Mehrjui

From an early age, Dariush Mehrjoui showed great interest in miniature painting and music, learning to play both santoor and piano.

When he was 17, Mehrjoui became interested in cinema and started learning English to understand the cinema of the world better and at the age of 20, he moved to the US and enrolled in the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) Department of Cinema.

Eventually, he switched his major to Philosophy and graduated from UCLA in 1964. He then became the chief editor of Pars Review magazine in Los Angeles, one year before he returned to Iran.

Majid Majidi

Born in 1959, internationally appreciated film producer, director and screenwriter, Majidi studies at the Institute of Dramatic Arts in Tehran and began his career as an actor. He starred in some movies such as ‘Justification’ (1981), ‘Two Sightless Eyes’ (1983) and ‘Boycott’ (1985).

 Majidi quit acting in 1989 and ventured on directing a few short films. His first ‘Badook’ (1991) won him a Crystal Simorgh at the Fajr International Film Festival. In 1999, ‘Children of Heaven’ (1997) was the first Iranian film nominated for the Academy Awards. It was followed by ‘The Color of Heaven’ (1999) and ‘Baran’ (2000).

Of Majidi’s international awards, Grand Prix des Amériques and Prize of the Ecumenical Jury - Special Mention from Montréal World Film Festival, The Best Director Award and the Best Screenplay Award from Gijón International Film Festival, Films from the South Award from Oslo Films Festival, and Douglas Sirk Award from Hamburg Film Festival for ‘Baran’ are the most notable ones.

He also directed ‘Muhammad (PBUH), The Messenger of God’ in 2015.

Ebrahim Hatamikia

Hatamikia studied Scriptwriting and began his career with writing screenplays for short films about the eight-year Iraq-Iran war in the 1980s.

He made his first feature film ‘Identity’ in 1986 before establishing himself as a director who addresses issues pertaining to the Iraq-Iran war and its aftermath with films such as ‘The Scout’, ‘From Karkheh to Rhine’ and ‘The Glass Agency’.

‘In the Levant Time’ director also has so far received several domestic and international awards for ‘In the Name of My Father’, ‘Red Ribbon’, ‘The Glass Agency’, ‘From Karkheh to Rhine’, ‘Mohajer (Immigrant)’, ‘The Scout’, ‘The Purple’, and ‘Che (Chamran)’.

Hatamikia’s ‘Bodyguard’ has been shown in many countries, including Germany, Canada, Australia, Britain, Lebanon, Syria and Afghanistan.

FM/AG