Bahram Beyzai obituary: Remembering Iran's polymath of film, theatre, and literature

Not long after the death of filmmaker Nasser Taghvai, Iranian cinema lost another of its towering figures when Bahram Beyzai, filmmaker, playwright, and scholar, passed away on his 87th birthday in the US after a long battle with cancer.

For those less familiar with his work, Bahram was a rare polymath, best known for films such as Downpour (1972), Bashu, The Little Stranger (1989), and Killing Mad Dogs (2001).

Beyond cinema, he was also a major literary figure, authoring more than 70 books, monographs, and plays. In addition, he was a founding member of the Center for Progressive Filmmakers, the Iranian Writers Association, and the Society of Dramatic Authors and Composers, and he played a key role in shaping future generations of artists during his tenure as Chair of the Department of Dramatic Arts at the University of Tehran.

Like many Iranian filmmakers, Bahram's life and career were affected by the 1979 Islamic Revolution, after which he was forced to resign from his university position and many of his works were banned.

Hoping for an environment that would support his academic and artistic endeavours, he moved from Iran in 2010 to take up a lecturing position in Iranian Studies at Stanford University.

Despite these obstacles, Bahram remains one of the leading architects of the Iranian New Wave (Cinema-ye Motafavet), a film movement that emerged in the 1960s and 70s as an artistic response to the radical changes during the reign of the last Shah.

In this special obituary, The New Arab pays tribute to a filmmaker, writer, and scholar whose legacy remains a lasting part of Iran's cultural history.

Family, folklore, and social change

Born in Tehran in December 1938, Bahram came from a family heavily involved in poetry and scholarship.

His father, Ne'metallah Beyzaie, was a poet and researcher, while his mother, Nayereh Movafegh, and his grandmother were intelligent and strong women whose love of stories and folktales inspired Bahram's early fascination with literature, myths, and folklore.

His family history further strengthened this fascination, as some of his ancestors had been prominent writers and directors of Taʿziyeh plays, and his cousin, Hossein Parto Beyzaie, later authored the first monograph on the history of the Zurkhaneh in 1958.

At just 19, Bahram wrote his first adapted play, Arash, inspired by Siavash Kasraei's poem Arash the Archer, and between 1962 and 1966, he worked on several folktale-inspired plays, including The Puppets, Sunset in a Strange Land, The Story of the Hidden Moon, Four Boxes, The Eighth Voyage of Sinbad, and The King Snake, while also exploring the culture of javānmardi, or chivalry, in So Dies Pahlevān Akbar (1963).

Although based on myth and legend, his plays sent clear social messages, questioning unfair systems of power and showing that both heroes and villains could be trapped by them, while also including women, working-class people, marginalised groups, and intellectuals, to highlight new ways for everyone to take part in the arts space.

Over the course of his career, Bahram became aware of how censorship harmed Iranian culture, which led him to help found the Iran Writers Association (IWA) in 1968.

After receiving threats during performances of The King Snake in Mashhad in 1969, he scaled back his theatre work and joined the Department of Performing Arts at Tehran University, first as a visiting professor and then, from 1973, as a full-time faculty member.

As noted by Saeed Talajooy, Senior Lecturer in Persian at the University of St Andrews, Bahram played a key role at Tehran University in raising standards for theatre education, turning the department into a vibrant centre for learning, experimentation, and creativity in acting, directing, playwriting, and stage design, until his dismissal by Islamist authorities in 1981 brought this chapter of his career to an end.

From theatre to screen

Determined to keep his storytelling alive, Bahram turned to cinema in the early 1970s, bringing his experience in theatre and writing into film, and becoming a leading figure of Iranian New Wave cinema.

His first works were two short films, Uncle Moustache (1970) and Journey (1972), after which he moved into feature filmmaking with Downpour, followed by The Stranger and the Fog (1974), The Crow (1977), and Ballad of Tara, developed between 1978 and 1980.

In 1986, he completed Bashu, the Little Stranger, which, despite being banned for several years and only widely released in Iran in 1989, became one of the most important films in Iranian cinema. It tells the story of an Afro-Iranian boy who escapes his war-torn village and finds shelter with a woman and her children in northern Iran during the Iran–Iraq war.

Moving into the 1990s, Bahram returned to filmmaking with Travellers (1992), which focused on death, mourning, and ritual, while his other films explored the struggles of writers, artists, and intellectuals under the censorship and political violence of the 1980s and 1990s

These themes appeared in a series of plays and screen projects from the 1990s and 2000s, including Reciting Siavush (1993), Account of Bondar the Premier (1997), Afra or the Day Is Passing (1997), Congregation for Senemar's Sacrifice (1998), The One Thousand and First Night (2003), and Congregation for Commemoration of the Travails of Professor Navid Mākān and His Wife, Engineer Rukhshid Farzin (2005).

In the 2000s, Bahram made two more films. The Eloquent Carpet (2006) was inspired by stories from the Shahnameh and Iranian art, while When We Are All Sleep (2009) told the story of a woman dealing with the loss of her family and the legal struggles that followed a tragic accident.

Despite his many achievements, continued threats and pressure in Iran eventually forced Bahram to leave his homeland.

Yet with the support of Stanford University, he was able to continue teaching, researching, and staging plays in the US.

In 2013, Bahram released Where Is A Thousand Tales?, a study on the Iranian origins of One Thousand and One Nights. At the same time, he continued directing plays, giving public talks, running acting workshops, and restoring his films, staying active as a teacher and artist until his later years.

Tributes pour in

Following Bahram's death, several tributes have poured in from artists and cultural figures in Iran and across the Iranian diaspora, reflecting his long-standing influence on cinema, theatre, and intellectual life.

Ramin Hosseinpour, an internationally recognised Iranian film director, architect, and composer, described Bahram's significance in Iranian and global culture: "Bahram was a pioneering Iranian filmmaker, playwright, author, and intellectual whose work reshaped both Iranian cinema and theatre. His films and plays combined poetic storytelling, cultural history, and formal innovation, creating a cinematic language that is deeply rooted in Persian heritage while remaining strikingly modern.

"As a scholar of cinema and literature, he also authored several influential works — including Hitchcock in the Frame — reflecting his deep engagement with film theory and criticism. His meticulous attention to Persian poetry, especially the legacy of Ferdowsi, positioned him as one of the most intellectually rigorous and internationally influential voices in contemporary Middle Eastern art.

"His fearless engagement with contemporary social realities was evident in films such as Killing Mad Dogs, which confronted the complexities and contradictions of post-revolutionary Iran with remarkable clarity and boldness."

Ramin also reflected on the broader cultural loss caused by Bahram's passing: "His passing marks the loss of one of the most profound and uncompromising voices in Iranian art. Bahram will be remembered for shaping the Iranian New Wave, for his bold reinterpretations of myth and history, and for the courage he showed in confronting censorship with dignity and imagination. He embodied a rare blend of intellectual rigour and artistic bravery, refusing to separate cultural memory from contemporary expression."

Addressing Bahram's influence on creative practice, Ramin added, "For the creative industry, his absence leaves a void that reaches far beyond cinema. Bahram demonstrated how an artist can remain deeply rooted in heritage while continually reinventing form and narrative. His work showed that cinema can be both intellectually rigorous and emotionally powerful, bridging tradition and innovation. He will be remembered not only for his films and plays, but also for inspiring generations of creators to think more deeply, question more boldly, and create with a sense of cultural responsibility."

Ramin also shared a personal reflection on Bahram's impact on his own work: "As an Iranian international filmmaker, I have been deeply influenced by both Bahram and Abbas Kiarostami. From Bahram, I learned the power of poetic storytelling, the depth of philosophical inquiry, and the courage to explore new cinematic forms, as well as a profound respect for Persian literature and its rich traditions — insights that continue to shape my narrative approach.

"Their approaches to structure, symbolism, and cinematic experimentation influenced me in developing my own path, guiding my filmmaking through architecture and rock music. This allowed me to develop a personal style that blends cinematic language, architectural composition, and the intensity of rock music. These insights continue to shape how I explore narrative, spatial design, and sound in my work, including Sculpture and my upcoming film, The Pretender."

Bijan Daneshmand, an Iranian actor and artist, also paid tribute: "Bahram was an exceptional artist who fused cinema, theatre, myth, and history with intellectual rigour and moral clarity. When I first saw Bashu, I was shocked; I wondered how such an amazing, yet simple, film could be made.

"His passing marks the loss of one of Iranian culture's most uncompromising voices, remembered particularly for reinterpreting Persian mythology, redefining women's roles on screen, and creating a cinema of resistance through form rather than slogans," Bijan tells The New Arab. 

"I never had the honour of working with Bahram, but reading and seeing his interviews taught me that integrity, precision, and trust in the audience are the deepest forms of artistic courage. Furthermore, he was a wonderful human being. Rest in peace."

As for Iranian actor Shervin Alenabi, he reflected on Bahram's lasting influence on storytelling and film practice: "Even if you never consciously studied Bahram's work, you always felt his presence in the way other stories breathed — in the patience he granted to the scenes, the weight he gave to silence, the respect he gave to language, to history, and the inner lives of his characters. There's something hypnotic about his films. They slow your body down.

"What often moved me is how much he trusts his audiences to meet the story halfway. You always felt a connection and a sense of trust between the storyteller and the audience. He looked at people without reducing them, treated culture as something living, and had a relationship with sound that felt so alive. Women, especially, were written with depth and gravity," Shervin shared with The New Arab. 

"As someone working outside of Iran, you often wonder what it is you're carrying — the rhythm, the references, the texture of life — but he taught me that the camera itself should carry responsibility.

"Bahram truly set a standard for people who never met him and for those who arrived later."

[Cover photo: Bahram on the set of 'The Ballad of Tara' in 1979. © Bahram Beyzai]

Zainab Mehdi is The New Arab's Associate Editor and researcher specialising in governance, development, and conflict in the Middle East and North Africa region 

Follow her on Instagram: @zaiamehdi_/@zainabmehdiwrites_