32 Facts About Dariush Mehrjui

Dariush Mehrjui was an Iranian filmmaker and a member of the Iranian Academy of the Arts.

Dariush Mehrjui was born on 8 December 1939 to a middle-class family in Tehran.

Dariush Mehrjui showed interest in painting miniatures, music, and playing santoor and piano.

Dariush Mehrjui spent a lot of time going to the movies, particularly American films which were un-dubbed and inter-spliced with explanatory title cards that explained the plot throughout the films.

In 1959, Dariush Mehrjui moved to the United States to study at University of California, Los Angeles' Department of Cinema.

One of his teachers there was Jean Renoir, whom Dariush Mehrjui credited with teaching him how to work with actors.

Dariush Mehrjui was dissatisfied with the film program due to its emphasis on the technical aspects of film and the quality of most of the teachers.

Dariush Mehrjui started his own literary magazine in 1964, Pars Review.

Dariush Mehrjui moved back to Tehran in 1965, and found employment as a journalist and screenwriter.

Dariush Mehrjui gave lectures on films and literature at the Center for Audiovisual Studies through the University of Tehran.

Dariush Mehrjui made his debut in 1966 with Diamond 33, a big budget parody of the James Bond film series.

Sa'edi was a friend of Dariush Mehrjui and suggested the idea to him when Dariush Mehrjui was looking for a suitable second film, and they collaborated on the script.

Dariush Mehrjui's work was highly critical of the Pahlavi government, and he had been arrested sixteen times.

Dariush Mehrjui went back to Iran later in 1970 to shoot Postchi, which starred Nassirian, Entezami and Jaleh Sam.

Dariush Mehrjui spends his days as an unhappy mail carrier and has two night jobs in order to pay his debts.

Dariush Mehrjui's misery has caused impotence and he is experimented upon by an amateur herbalist who is one of his employers.

Dariush Mehrjui's wife comes looking for him, and in a fit of rage Taghi murders her and is eventually caught for his crime.

In 1973 Dariush Mehrjui began directing what was to be his most acclaimed film, The Cycle.

Dariush Mehrjui got the idea for the film when a friend suggest that he investigate the black market and illicit blood traffic in Iran.

Dariush Mehrjui was commissioned by the Iranian Blood Transfusion Center to create three short documentaries about safe and healthy blood donations.

In 1978, the Iranian Ministry of Health commissioned Dariush Mehrjui to make the documentary Peyvast kolieh, about kidney transplants.

Dariush Mehrjui stated that he, "enthusiastically took part in the revolution, shooting miles of reels of its daily events".

Dariush Mehrjui then directed Hayat-e Poshti Madrese-ye Adl-e Afagh in 1980.

In Hamoun, a portrait of an intellectual whose life is falling apart, Dariush Mehrjui sought to depict his generation's post-revolutionary turn from politics to mysticism.

In 1995, Dariush Mehrjui made Pari, an unauthorized loose film adaptation of JD Salinger's book Franny and Zooey.

Dariush Mehrjui called Salinger's action "bewildering", explaining that he saw his film as "a kind of cultural exchange".

Dariush Mehrjui's follow-up film, 1997's Leila, is a melodrama about an urban, upper-middle-class couple who learn that the wife is unable to bear children.

Dariush Mehrjui introduced realism, symbolism, and the sensibilities of art cinema.

Dariush Mehrjui's films have some resemblance with those of Rosselini, De Sica, and Satyajit Ray, but he added something distinctively Iranian, in the process starting one of the greatest modern film waves.

The one constant in Dariush Mehrjui's work was his attention to the discontents of contemporary, primarily urban, Iran.

One of them later confessed to being the killer, saying that he was a former employee of Dariush Mehrjui who harbored a grudge against him "due to financial issues".

Dariush Mehrjui was sentenced to death in February 2024 while the three others received prison terms ranging from eight to 36 years for being accomplices to the crime.