Iranian filmmaker Bahram Beyzaie, best known for his 1989 feature Bashu: The Little Stranger, which was restored at the 2025 Venice Film Festival, has died. He was 87.
Beyzaie died on his birthday, December 26, in California due to complications from cancer. The filmmaker had been teaching in the Iranian Studies faculty at Stanford University.
Bahram Beyzaie was born in December 1938 in Tehran. He was one of the leading filmmakers of Iranian New Wave cinema, with titles including Downpour (1972), Bashu: The Little Stranger (1989), and Killing Mad Dogs (2001).
Beyzaie was also a founding member of the Center for Progressive Filmmakers in Iran, the Iranian Writers Association, and the Society of Dramatic Authors and Composers. He served as the Chair of the Dramatic Arts Department at the University of Tehran. Following the Islamic Revolution in 1979, he was forced to resign from Tehran University, and the government banned his work.
Beyzaie left Iran in 2010 and joined Stanford University as a lecturer in Iranian studies.
Filmmakers from across the Iranian diaspora have shared statements about Beyzaie following news of his death.
In a post on social media, filmmaker Asghar Farhadi said: “Bahram Beyzaie, my great teacher, whose works, words, and above all, his love for the culture of this land I have followed with all my heart, has now left this world in exile. I have truly never known a more Iranian person than Bahram Beyzaie in this day and age, and how bitter it is that this most Iranian of Iranians, thousands of miles away from Iran, turns a blind eye to the world.”
