Maziar Bahari

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Maziar Bahari (born 1967 in Tehran, Iran) is an Iranian journalist and film maker.

[edit] Career

After graduating with a degree in communications from Concordia University in Montreal, he made his first film The Voyage of the Saint Louis about the fatal voyage of more than 900 German Jewish refugees in 1939. He has since been active as a filmmaker and journalist.

His films include:

Paint! No Matter What
Of Shames and Coffins
Mohammad and the Matchmaker
Football, Iranian Style
And Along Came a Spider
Targets: Reporters in Iraq
Greetings from Sadr City
A Cult that would be an Army'z'

His plays A Fairly Justified Revenge and Romance in Abu Ghraib have been performed as part of 1001 Nights Now compilation since 2003. Bahari has been the only filmmaker who has consistently worked in Iraq since since the invasion in 2003. He has produced a number of documentaries and news reports for Channel 4 and BBC on subjects as varied as Ayatollah Sistani, Muqtada al-Sadr and human rights in Iraq. Since 1998, Bahari has been Newsweek magazine's Iran correspondent. A retrospective of Bahari's films was organized in November 2007 by International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam.

"In a country known for neorealist fiction films that focus on small events in the lives of individuals, the work of Iranian director Maziar Bahari is somewhat anomalous. Employing a traditional documentary style to explore more far-reaching cultural events, Bahari’s films provide a glimpse inside contemporary Iranian culture as they reveal the human element behind the headlines and capture cultural truths through the lens of individual experience. Representing a new generation of young Iranian filmmakers, Bahari’s trenchant looks at social issues in his country have brought both controversy and international acclaim." Harvard Film Archives