Cyrus Nowrasteh has directed the theatrical features The Stoning of Soraya M, The Young Messiah, and Infidel.
18 Facts About Cyrus Nowrasteh
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Cyrus Nowrasteh is of Iranian descent, and graduated from Madison West High School in 1974 and was a city boys high school tennis champion.
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Cyrus Nowrasteh attended New Mexico State University on an athletic scholarship and later transferred to the University of Southern California to attend the School of Cinematic Arts, graduating in 1977.
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In 1986, Cyrus Nowrasteh began his career by writing for the CBS television series The Equalizer.
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Cyrus Nowrasteh went on to work on Falcon Crest as a producer and story editor, and wrote the pilot for the USA Network show La Femme Nikita.
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Cyrus Nowrasteh made his directorial debut with the Veiled Threat, a 1989 independent film based on the real-life murder of an Iranian journalist living in Orange County.
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Cyrus Nowrasteh subsequently accused the AFI of buckling to "censorship" and claimed their pulling the film "killed" its chances at distribution.
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In 2001, Cyrus Nowrasteh wrote and directed the highly rated, award-winning Showtime presentation The Day Reagan Was Shot, which starred Richard Dreyfuss as Alexander Haig and was executive produced by Oliver Stone.
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Cyrus Nowrasteh wrote the "Manifest Destiny" episode of the highly regarded Steven Spielberg and TNT miniseries presentation, Into the West.
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The film version was directed by Cyrus Nowrasteh and written by Nowrasteh and his wife, screenwriter Betsy Giffen Nowrasteh.
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Cyrus Nowrasteh directed the biblical drama The Young Messiah, which was released on 11 March 2016.
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On 10 December 2015, Cyrus Nowrasteh was interviewed on EWTN by Raymond Arroyo.
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Cyrus Nowrasteh's wrote, directed, and produced the 2020 film Infidel, a political thriller about an American journalist held captive by the Iranian regime.
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Cyrus Nowrasteh cited several real world instances of American nationals imprisoned by the Iranian government, including Xiyue Wang and Robert Levinson.
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The film was shot on-location in Jordan, where Nowrasteh previously shot Soraya M On his website, Nowrasteh stated the Jordanian film commission kept its filming secret for fear of objections from the Iranian government, and the film had heavy security.
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Cyrus Nowrasteh's most notable other project is a film about Andrew Jackson entitled The Battle of New Orleans.
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Cyrus Nowrasteh received criticism from conservatives for an alleged "liberal bias" in his Showtime film, The Day Reagan Was Shot.
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Cyrus Nowrasteh describes himself as more libertarian than either conservative or liberal.