Hi everyone and thank you for tuning in to the 413th episode of Awards Chatter, the Hollywood

Reporters Awards Podcast.

I'm Scott Feinberg, the host and also a trustee professor at Chapman University's Dodge

College of Film and Media Arts.

And this is a special live episode being recorded at Chapman's Filino Theatre in Orange,

California, in front of an audience of my students and other members of the community

of this great film school.

Today, we are honored to be joined by a brilliant writer and director who, at just 49, is already

the most accomplished filmmaker ever to emerge from Iran.

The Hollywood Reporter has said that his films have, quote, revolutionized new Iranian cinema,

pulling it out of the much beaten path of realism and self-reflection pioneered by directors

like Abbas Kirostami and Mosin Makmalbaf and onto a new, highly dramatized and theatrical

road, close quote.

They explore contemporary life's complexities and moral dilemmas via brilliant screenplays

that the Los Angeles Times has compared to a Russian doll, with quote, stories that

are inside each other, close quote, and that NPR has likened to an onion, quote, you peel

one layer and there's another layer fresh ready for you, close quote.

Five of the nine feature films he has directed were chosen by Iran to represent it in the

race for the best international feature Oscar, 2009's About Ellie, 2011's Asseparation,

2013's The Past, 2016's The Salesman, and 2021's Ahiro.

Two of them, Asseparation and The Salesman, were nominated for that Oscar, and both won.

Ahiro, which Amazon is due to release in December, may well follow in their footsteps.

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