Abbas Kiarostami was an Iranian film director, screenwriter, poet, photographer, and film producer. An active filmmaker from 1970, Kiarostami had been involved in the production of over forty films, including shorts and documentaries. Kiarostami attained critical acclaim for directing the Koker trilogy (1987–1994), Close-Up (1990), The Wind Will Carry Us (1999), and Taste of Cherry (1997), which was awarded the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival that year. In later works, Certified Copy (2010) and Like Someone in Love (2012), he filmed for the first time outside Iran: in Italy and Japan, respectively. His films Where Is the Friend's Home? (1987), Close-Up, and The Wind Will Carry Us were ranked among the 100 best foreign films in a 2018 critics' poll by BBC Culture. Close-Up was also ranked one of the 50 greatest movies of all time in the famous decennial Sight & Sound poll conducted in 2012.
Majid Majidi is an Iranian filmmaker and producer. In his films, Majidi has touched on many themes and genres and has won numerous international awards.
The cinema of Iran, or of Persia, refers to the film industry in Iran. In particular, Iranian art films have garnered international recognition. Iranian films are usually written and spoken in the Persian language.
Jafar Panâhi is an Iranian film director, screenwriter, and film editor, commonly associated with the Iranian New Wave film movement. After several years of making short films and working as an assistant director for fellow Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami, Panahi achieved international recognition with his feature film debut, The White Balloon (1995). The film won the Caméra d'Or at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival, the first major award an Iranian film won at Cannes.
Bahman Ghobadi is an Iranian Kurdish film director, producer and writer. He belongs to the "new wave" of Iranian cinema.
Onat Kutlar was a prominent Turkish writer and poet, founder of the Turkish Sinematek and cofounder of the Istanbul International Film Festival.
Reshad Strik is a Bosnian-Australian actor and filmmaker.
Bahman Farmanara is an Iranian film director, screenwriter, and film producer. He is best known for his films Smell of Camphor, Scent of Jasmine (2000), A House Built on Water (2001), and A Little Kiss (2005). Bahman Farmanara is the second son of a family of four brothers and one sister. The family business was Textile and he was the only son who did not join the company and went off to the United Kingdom and later on to the United States to study acting and directing. He graduated from the University of Southern California with a BA in Cinema in 1966. After returning to Iran and doing military service, he joined the National Iranian Radio and Television.
Reza Allamehzadeh is an Iranian-born Dutch filmmaker, film critic and writer who lives in the Netherlands. He is primarily known for his films about refugees, such as The Guests of Hotel Astoria (1988), and the documentary Holy Crime (1994), about the murder of opposition figures in Europe by the Islamic regime in Iran.
The Cinemanila International Film Festival is an annual film festival held in Manila, Philippines. It was founded by Filipino filmmaker Amable "Tikoy" Aguiluz in 1999. The focus of the festival is on the cinema of the Philippines as well as Southeast Asian cinema.
Semih Kaplanoğlu is a Turkish screenwriter, film director and producer.
Michel Brault, OQ was a Canadian cinematographer, cameraman, film director, screenwriter, and film producer. He was a leading figure of Direct Cinema, characteristic of the French branch of the National Film Board of Canada in the 1960s. Brault was a pioneer of the hand-held camera aesthetic.
Pourān Derakh'shandeh is an Iranian film director, producer, screen writer, and researcher.
Bahman Maghsoudlou is a film scholar, critic, author and independent film producer/director. Maghsoudlou has, in the words of Cinema Without Borders editor-in-chief Bijan Tehrani, "dedicated his life [to] recording valuable information about Iran’s contemporary art and culture."
Granaz Moussavi is an Iranian-Australian contemporary poet, film director and screenwriter. She is known for her avant-garde poetry in the 1990s. Her debut feature film My Tehran for Sale (2009) is an internationally-acclaimed Australian-Iranian co-production. Her second feature film When Pomegranates Howl was nominated for the 14th Asia Pacific Screen Award as the Best Youth Feature Film and was selected as Australian entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 94th Academy Awards.
Shahram Alidi is an Iranian film director, screenwriter, and film producer. He is also a painter, illustrator, and graphic designer. Alidi is part of a generation of filmmakers in the Iranian New Wave. These filmmakers share many common techniques including the use of poetic dialogue
and allegorical story telling. His credits include the 2009 film Whisper with the wind.
Mehdī Nāderī is an Iranian film director. He started directing theater in 1988. He has directed documentaries and fiction films. He is also a producer, scriptwriter, advisor and editor.
Mehmet Aktaş is a Kurdish filmmaker, producer, author, and journalist. He is born in Turkey but lives in Germany. He is the founder and chief executive of the film production and distribution company, Mîtosfilm, in Berlin.
Zhang Lü is a Chinese filmmaker. Zhang was originally a novelist before embarking on a career in cinema. His arthouse films have mostly focused on the disenfranchised, particularly ethnic Koreans living in China; these include Grain in Ear (2006), Desert Dream (2007), Dooman River (2011), Scenery (2013), and Gyeongju (2014).
Halil Şafak Bakkalbaşıoğlu is a Turkish television director, television producer, documentary producer and film director.
