Bahman Ghobadi

Bahman Ghobadi is an Iranian Kurdish film director, producer and writer, born in 1969 in Baneh, and a figure of the new wave of Iranian cinema. After studying film directing at the Iran Broadcasting College he made short films, worked as assistant director to Abbas Kiarostami, and founded the company Mij Film in 2000 to make films about Iran's ethnic groups. His first feature, A Time for Drunken Horses, was the first Kurdish film produced in Iran and won the Camera d'Or at Cannes. Marooned in Iraq, Turtles Can Fly, Half Moon, No One Knows About Persian Cats and the documentary A Flag Without a Country followed. He works in exile and has campaigned for freedom of expression.