13 Facts About Mohsen Makhmalbaf

Mohsen Makhmalbaf is an Iranian film director, writer, film editor, and producer.

Mohsen Makhmalbaf has made more than 20 feature films, won 50 awards, and served as a juror in more than 15 major film festivals.

Mohsen Makhmalbaf left Iran in 2005 shortly after the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Mohsen Makhmalbaf has lived in Paris since the events of the 2009 Iranian presidential election.

Mohsen Makhmalbaf's films have explored the relationship between the individual and a larger social and political environment.

Mohsen Makhmalbaf has worked in several genres, from realist films to fantasy and surrealism, minimalism, and large frescoes of everyday life, with a preference for the themes of childhood and cinema.

Mohsen Makhmalbaf made his first film, Tobeh Nosuh, in 1983, and Boycott, a film set in pre-revolutionary Iran, in 1985.

Mohsen Makhmalbaf portrays human despair, exploitation, and resilience in The Cyclist, a movie about Nasim, a poor Afghan refugee in Iran in desperate need of money for his ailing wife.

Mohsen Makhmalbaf took time off from directing in 1996 to form the Mohsen Makhmalbaf Film House, a school for young filmmakers.

In contrast to his later career, for about a decade after the revolution, Mohsen Makhmalbaf expressed views and made films that served revolutionary art in the cultural atmosphere of Iran.

Motalebi says that Mohsen Makhmalbaf turned people against the film and its actors:.

In later years, Mohsen Makhmalbaf became deeply disillusioned, first by the Islamic regime, and soon after by Islamic ideology.

In December 2023, together with 50 other filmmakers, Mohsen Makhmalbaf signed an open letter published in Liberation, demanding a ceasefire and an end to the killing of civilians amid the 2023 Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip.