Reza Allamehzadeh

Reza Allamehzadeh (Persian: رضا علامه‌زاده) is a Persian-born Dutch film-maker, film critic and writer who lives in the Netherlands. He is mostly famous because of his films about refugees, such as The Guests of Hotel Astoria (1988), and the documentary Holy Crime (1994), which is about the murder of opposition figures in Europe by the Islamic regime in Iran.

Allamehzadeh was born in 1943 in Sari, Mazandaran province. He studied film directing at “Tehran Academy of Film and Television” in 1966-1969. Alongside with filmmaking he is regularly writing and publishing children’s books, novels and short stories. He is giving film and TV courses in various universities around the world such as Hollins University in Virginia (US), Leeds Metropolitan University (UK) and International R/TV Training Center in the Netherlands, where he has been living since 1983.

Allamehzadeh has been one of the advocates of Kurdish cinema. He is native in Persian and fluent in English and to some extent Dutch and Spanish.

Films

Some of his films are:

• The Trap (1973), awarded Grand Prix at 12th International film festival for Children and Youth in Gijon, Spain
• A Few Simple Sentences (1986), awarded as: best short Stockholm 1986, International Immigrant Film Festival; best children's film, Tomar 1987 International Festival of Cinema for Children and Youth; best children's film, the jury of the International Centre of Films for Children and Youth (CIFEJ), International Moscow Film Festival, 1987.
• The Guests of Hotel Astoria (1988), feature length, selected for the Venice, Moscow, Montreal and Chicago Film Festivals;
• Holy Crime, a controversial documentary on state terrorism of Islamic government of Iran in European countries.

See also

• Persian cinema

External links

• Reza Alamehzadeh at the Internet Movie Database
• The Biography and Works of Reza Allamehzadeh
• Interview with Reza Allamehzadeh on the documentary 'Holy Crime' (Radio Zamaneh, in Persian)