Veteran Iranian filmmaker Bahram Beizaee passes away

The veteran Iranian director Bahram Beizaee passed away at the age of 87.

Born on December 26, 1938 in Tehran, he was a director, producer, screen-writer and editor, introduced to the world of art when he was very young.

In high school, he wrote two historical plays which eventually became his preferred method of writing.

He then entered University of Tehran, but did not finish his studies.

Then he started researching Iranian theatre and epic literature.

At the age of 21, he did an extensive research on the ‘Book of Kings’ (The Shahname) and Ta’azieh which is a traditional Iranian play.

He also studied the pre-Islamic history and familiarized himself with Persian painting.

He also wrote a number of articles about cinema which later became the subject of one of his books.

Some of his books are ‘The Eighth Voyage of Sinbad’, ‘Banquet’, ‘Serpent King’, ‘Dolls’, ‘Story of the Hidden Moon’.

Beizaee started his film career with a successful short film named ‘Uncle Mustache’ in 1970.

Then in 1971, he directed and produced his masterpiece ‘Downpour’.

Besides writing a large number of film scripts, he directed some movies, including ‘The Death of Yazdgerd’ (1981), ‘Perhaps Another Time’ (1987), ‘The Passengers’ (1991), ‘Killing Dogs’ (2001), and ‘While We Were Sleep’ (2008).

In 2001, his ‘Killing Dogs’ won the Best Screenplay award at 19th International Tehran Film Festival.

He also won several other awards from a number of domestic and international film festivals.